🔰The Road to Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling read by Charles Dance - 70th VJ Day commemoration London

Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling By the old Moor Mine Pagoda Looking lazy at the sea There's a Burma girl a-shedding And I know she thinks of me For the wind is in the palm trees And the temple bells they say Come you back, you British soldier Come you back to Mandalay Come you back to Mandalay Where the old flotilla lay Can't you hear their paddles chunking From Rangoon to Mandalay On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay Her petticoat was yellow And her little cap was green And her name was Supi Yorlad Just the same as Thibaud's queen And I seen her first A-smoking of a whacking white cheroot And a-wasting Christian kisses On an heathen idol's foot Blooming idol made of mud What they called the great gourd bud Plucky lot she cared for idols When I kissed her where she stood On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay When the mist was on the rice fields And the sun was dropping low She'd get her little banjo and she'd sing Koolaloe low With her arm upon my shoulder And her cheek against my cheek We used to watch the steamers And the hathis pulling teak Elephants are pulling teak In the sludgy, scudgy creek Where the silence hung that heavy He was half afraid to speak On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay But that's all shoved behind me Long ago and far away And there ain't no buses running From Bank to Mandalay And I'm learning here in London What the ten-year soldier tells If you've heard the Easter calling You won't ever eat naught else No, you won't eat nothing else But them spicy garlic smells And the sunshine and the palm trees And the tinkly temple bells On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay I'm sick of wasting leather On these gritty paving stones And a blasted English drizzle Wakes the fever in my bones Though I walk through fifty housemates Out of Chelsea to the Strand And they talk a lot of loving But what do they understand? Beefy face and grubby And Lord, what do they understand? I'm a neater, sweeter maiden In a cleaner, greener land On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay Ship me somewhere east of Suez Where the best is like the worst Where there are no ten commandments And a man can raise a first For the temple bells are calling And it's there that I would be By the old mule mine pagoda Looking lazy at the sea On the road to Mandalay Where the old flotilla lay With us sick beneath the awnings When we went to Mandalay On the road to Mandalay Where the flying fishes play And the dawn comes up like thunder Out of China across the bay