Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835–1911)

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.

Is it a god or a king that comes?

Both are evil, and both are strong;

With women and worshipping, dancing and drums,

Carry your gods and your kings along.

Fanciful shapes of a plastic earth,

These are the visions that weary the eye;

These I may ’scape by a luckier birth,

Musing, and fasting, and hoping to die.

When shall these phantoms flicker away

Like the smoke of the guns on the wind-swept hill,

Like the sounds and colours of yesterday:

And the soul have rest, and the air be still?

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.

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.

Near me a Musalmán, civil and mild,

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.’