Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Plea of the Simla Dancers</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Too late, alas! the song<br>To remedy the wrong; --<br>The rooms are taken from us, swept and<br>garnished for their fate.<br>But these tear-besprinkled pages<br>Shall attest to future ages<br>That we cried against the crime of it --<br>too late, alas! too late!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>"What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"<br>Was there no room save only in Benmore<br>For docket, duftar, and for office drudge,<br>That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?<br>Must babus do their work on polished teak?<br>Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill?<br>Was there no other cheaper house to seek?<br>You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">We never harmed you! Innocent our guise,<br>Dainty our shining feet, our voices low;<br>And we revolved to divers melodies,<br>And we were happy but a year ago.<br>To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles --<br>That beamed upon us through the deodars --<br>Is wan with gazing on official files,<br>And desecrating desks disgust the stars.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights --<br>Nay! by the witchery of flying feet --<br>Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights --<br>By all things merry, musical, and meet --<br>By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes --<br>By wailing waltz -- by reckless gallop's strain --<br>By dim verandas and by soft replies,<br>Give us our ravished ball-room back again!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or -- hearken to the curse we lay on you!<br>The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain,<br>And murmurs of past merriment pursue<br>Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain;<br>And when you count your poor Provincial millions,<br>The only figures that your pen shall frame<br>Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions<br>Danced out in tumult long before you came.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates,<br>"Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse,<br>Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates<br>Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use.<br>And all the long verandas, eloquent<br>With echoes of a score of Simla years,<br>Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment --<br>Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=511069" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,<br>So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought,<br>And ever in your ears a phantom Band<br>Shall blare away the staid official thought.<br>Wherefore -- and ere this awful curse he spoken,<br>Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,<br>And give -- ere dancing cease and hearts be broken --<br>Give us our ravished ball-room back again!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Rudyard+Kipling">Rudyard Kipling</a></strong></div>