Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/15

 But Parvati, with her dreadful sickle,

Shore the leaf, the precious bud that shrouded

And a flash of fate unkindly blasted

All the proud spun dream of bliss and name.

In the shady leafage of a plane tree

Once the queen was lulling him to slumber,

Tenderly removing from the soft fur

Aught that sucked audacious those blue veins;

Sudden from the bamboo thicket issued,

In a sailor’s garb, a human monster,

Softened not that heart of flint the touching

Sight of all that mother’s love and pains.

O’er the woods a musket shot; a piteous

Cry; the smoke cleared off and down the princess

Toppled headlong from her leafy fastness

Overtaken by the fatal lead;

From the mother’s dying arms the murderer

Tore the child and to his vessel bore him:

So to distant lands in galling fetters

Apedom’s last surviving promise sped.

Ah! what anguish smote within thee, luckless

Hanuman, as far away

Thine ancestral wood and forest fastness

Muffled in the mist-wreath lay,

And beyond the stern thine eye went ranging

Tearful, under foreign skies and changing

Stars that bent o’er endless seas of grey.