Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/29

 As stood our ancestors from earliest ages.

Here’s a clear proof from old world History’s pages:

When gracious Sita once was borne away

By Ravanas to Lanek, to retrieve her,

His bride, the god, then wearing human clay,

Turned not for aid to men but us—Sugriva

He summoned, and on Hanuman relied:

And how those glorious apish chiefs achieved

True miracles of valour; how the bride

Of Rama from the ogre was retrieved

By Hanuman; how one bold archway bended

Across the sea to Ceylon’s isle, suspended

By hands of apes:—of this the lustrous story

Is graved on History’s slabs in deathless glory.

And once e’en man our prior claim confessed:

That half-divine Ind deems our race, the shrines

Scattered from Simla to the sea attest,

Where choirs of apes religious life refines.

Oh! just let us live on as lived our sires.

The mango fruit—what sweeter in the wide world?

And life on boughs with scented blooms, this pied world

Of woods—what nearer to the heart’s desires?

’Tis just sheer folly and not worth a tittle,

This progress, science, culture and the rest of it—

For me this mango stone outweighs the best of it.

I, too, have looked into the world a little,

Have been as far as Bombay and Calcutta

And watched the life of this mad western species

How starched it sits in circles—not a flutter!

But like a puppet carved in boxwood each is,

How anxiously its every movement weighed is!

What gestures, vapid phrases, formal, flat,