Or he had known how thy nature was free;
Goddess of fickleness,
Blest be thy dwelling place,
Oh, to abide in the Pumpkin with thee.
Mr. Kipling grasped at the occasion for a ballad in his best vein. The plot of the story aroused his old time enthusiasm, and he transplanted the pumpkin eater and his wife to the scenes of his earlier powers:
In a great big Mammoth pumpkin
Lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a wife of mine a-settin’
And I know she’s mad at me.
For I hear her calling, “Peter!”