Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/55

 Of poisons, human riff-raff and perversions.

Why have we to abjure our own traditions

And proper being, once free from care’s attritions,

And that disdain which nature’s powers assign us,

And to which use and custom both incline us,

To ape grotesquely the human puppet’s dances,

Merely to gratify the king’s vain fancies,

Who yet from apes real human beings wont fashion,

Ay, scarcely wins a smile from the Caucasian.

Nay, take again your spotted rags and scout us,

We’ll bend no more a collared neck like horses,

But plunge our breasts in apedom’s purest sources:

Play out your sorry comedy without us.’

“Consentient hands applauded and decisive

Stripped off their rags: then, houp la! o’er lianas

To tree-tops, once more full-blown quadrumanas,

They swarmed and scampered off with squeals derisive:

Then only dawned on me that speech was mainly

An echo of another more diffusive,

When Vindragupta’s eloquence abusive

With rank breath fanned rebellion’s flame, but vainly.

Perhaps, their secret head long undetected,

He’d been en rapport with the disaffected.”

The monarch heard him out with visage troubled,

His eye electric flashed, his small fist doubled:

“Ha traitors! but I swear by Para-brahma,

By Brama, Siva, ay, by Krishma, Rama,

By all gods—by thy streams oh! sacred Ganges,

By thee, great-grandsire, Hanuman, th’ anointed

By heaven, to which this hand of mine is pointed,

By throne and crown, by these gold-glittering flanges

I swear upon my purple, on this brand,