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I. The Hindu Ascetic HERE as I sit by the Jumna bank, | |
| Watching the flow of the sacred stream, | |
| Pass me the legions, rank on rank, | |
| And the cannon roar, and the bayonets gleam. | |
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| Is it a god or a king that comes? | 5 |
| Both are evil, and both are strong; | |
| With women and worshipping, dancing and drums, | |
| Carry your gods and your kings along. | |
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| Fanciful shapes of a plastic earth, | |
| These are the visions that weary the eye; | 10 |
| These I may ’scape by a luckier birth, | |
| Musing, and fasting, and hoping to die. | |
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| When shall these phantoms flicker away | |
| Like the smoke of the guns on the wind-swept hill, | |
| Like the sounds and colours of yesterday: | 15 |
| And the soul have rest, and the air be still? | |
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II. Badminton Hardly a shot from the gate we storm’d, | |
| Under the Moree battlement’s shade; | |
| Close to the glacis our game was form’d, | |
| There had the fight been, and there we play’d. | 20 |
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| Lightly the demoiselles titter’d and leapt, | |
| Merrily caper’d the players all; | |
| North, was the garden where Nicholson slept, | |
| South, was the sweep of a batter’d wall. | |
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| Near me a Musalmán, civil and mild, | 25 |
| Watch’d as the shuttlecocks rose and fell; | |
| And he said, as he counted his beads and smiled, | |
| ‘God smite their souls to the depths of hell.’ | |
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