Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
To the Unknown Goddess
W
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?
Shall I meet you next season at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?
Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?
Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play?
And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay “thirteen-two”;
When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses, forswearing the swearing of oaths;
When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.
To the God that they knew not an altar—so I, a young Pagan, have praised
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you.