# Littell's Living Age/Volume 139/Issue 1802/A Rajput Chief of the Old School

From The Fortnightly Review.
* A RAJPUT CHIEF OF THE OLD SCHOOL.
* I.
* And why say ye that I must leave
* This pleasure-garden, where the sun
* Is baffled by the boughs that weave
* Their shade o'er my pavilion?
* The trees I planted with my hands,
* This house I built among the sands,
* Within a lofty wall which rounds
* This green oasis, kept with care;
* With room for my horses, hawks, and hounds —
* And the cool arcade for my ladies fair.
* II.
* How often, while the landscape flames
* With heat, within the marble court
* I lie and laugh to see my dames
* About the shimmering fountain sport;
* Or after the long scorching days,
* When the hot wind hushes, and falling stays
* The clouds of dust, and stars are bright,
* I've spread my carpets in the grove,
* And talked and loitered the livelong night
* With some foreign leman light o' love.
* III.
* My wives — I married, as was fit,
* Some thirteen of the purest blood —
* And two or three have germs of wit,
* And almost all are chaste and good;
* But all their womanhood has been
* Hencooped behind a marble screen;
* They count their pearls and doze—while she,
* The courtezan, had travelled far,
* Her songs were fresh, her talk was free
* Of the Delhi court, or the Kabul war.
* IV.
* Those days are gone — I am old and ill,
* Why should I move? I love the place;
* The dawn is fresh, the nights are still —
* Ah yes! I see it in your face,
* My latest dawn and night are nigh,
* And of my clan a chief must die
* Within the ancestral rampart's fold
* Paced by the listening sentinel,
* Where ancient cannon, and beldames old
* As the guns, peer down from the citadel.
* V.
* Once more, once only, they shall bear
* My litter up the steep ascent
* That pierces, mounting stair on stair,
* The inmost ring of battlement.
* Oft-times that frowning gate I've past
* (This time, but one, shall be the last),
* Where the tribal daemon's image stands
* Crowning the arch, and on the side
* Are scarlet prints of women's hands —
* Farewell! and forth must the lady ride,
* VI.
* Her face unveiled, in rich attire,
* She strikes the stone with fingers red —
* "Farewell the palace, to the pyre
* We follow, widows of the dead!"
* And I, whose life has reached its verge,
* Bethink me of the wailing dirge
* That day my father forth was borne,
* High seated, swathed in many a shawl,
* By priests who scatter flowers, and mourn —
* And the eddying smoke of the funeral.
* VII.
* Thus did he vanish. With him went
* Seven women, by the flames set free;
* I built a stately monument
* To shrine their graven effigy:
* In front my father, godlike, stands;
* The widows kneel with folded hands;
* All yearly rites are duly paid,
* All round are planted sacred trees,
* And the ghosts are soothed by the spreading shade,
* And lulled by the strain of the obsequies.
* VIII.
* His days were troubled; his curse I earned
* Full often, ere he passed that arch,
* My father, by his farms we burned
* By raiding on the English march;
* And then that summer I rebelled,
* One fort we seized, and there we held
* Until my father's guns grew hot;
* But the floods and darkness veiled our flight,
* We rode their lines with never a shot,
* For the matches were moist in the rainy night.
* IX.
* That's forty years ago, and since,
* With all these wild unruly clans,
* In this salt wilderness, a prince
* Of camel-riding caterans,
* I've sought religiously, Heaven knows,
* A life of worship and repose,
* Vext by the stiff, ungrateful league
* Of all my folk in fretful stir,
* By priest and gods in dark intrigue,
* And the wasting curse of the sorcerer.
* X.
* They say I seized their broad estates,
* Upbraid me with a kinsman's blood;
* He led his bands before my gates,
* And then — it was an ancient feud.
* But I must offer gifts, and pray
* The Brahmin's stain be washed away —
* Saint and poisoner, fed with bribes,
* Deep versed in every traitorous plan —
* I told them only to kill the scribes,
* But my Afghans hated the holy man.
* XI.
* Yes, peace is blessed, and prayer is good;
* My eldest son defied my power;
* I lost his mother in the wood
* That hides my lonely hunting-tower;
* She was a proud unbroken dame;
* Like son, like mother, hard to tame
* Or tire — and so he took the bent,
* His mother's kinsfolk at his heel,
* With many a restless malcontent —
* There were some had ease, ere I sheathed my steel.
* XII.
* The English say I govern ill,
* That laws must silence spear and gun,
* So may my peaceful subjects till;
* But peaceful subjects have I none.
* I can but follow my father's rule,
* I cannot learn in English school;
* Yet the hard world softens, and change is best,
* My sons must leave the ancient ways,
* The folk are weary, the land shall rest,
* And the gods are kind, for I end my days.
* XIII.
* Then carry me to my castle steep,
* Whose time is ending with its lord's:
* Eight months my grandsire held the keep
* Against the fierce Maratta hordes;
* It would not stand three winter suns
* Before the shattering English guns;
* And so these rude old faithful stones,
* My fathers' haven in high war-tide,
* Must rive and moulder, as soon my bones
* Shall bleach on the holy river-side.
* XIV.
* Years hence, when all the earth is calm,
* And forts are level, and foes agree
* To leave their fighting, trade and farm,
* And toil, like oxen, patiently,
* When this my garden palace stands
* A desert ruin, choked with sands,
* A broken well 'mid trees that fade,
* Some traveller still my name may bless,
* The chief lang syne that left him shade
* And a water-spring in the wilderness.
* A. C. Lyall.