Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/216

32 Stark levies of the southern hills, the Deccan's sharpest swords,

And he the harlot's traitor son the goatherd Mulhar Rao!

Thrice thirty-thousand men were we before the mists had cleared,

The low white mists of morning heard the war-conch scream and bray;

We called upon Bhowani and we gripped them by the beard,

We rolled them like a flood and washed their ranks away.

The children of the hills of Khost before our lances ran,

We drove the black Rohillas back as cattle to the pen;

'Twas then we needed Mulhar Rao to end what we began,

A thousand men had saved the charge; he fled the field with ten!