42
And from his palm the globe of empire bounded,
He stooped to pick it up, and vaguely stuck it
Into his royal robes posterior tucket,
Then, having stowed away that gold potato,
Shrieked: “Revolution! what! and in my State, too?”
With anguish Bhandragura answering sighed: “Ra-
-jah, know Rebellion crawls with subtle slyness,
Then raises all at once its head of hydra:
Perhaps thou dost recal the old ape, Highness,
Named Vindragupta, who once in full session
Challenged thy sovereign will, at thine accession,
Stormed against Progress, raved of continuity,
And when the t— h’m! that rearward superfluity
Thou badest to dock-blew up sedition’s bellows
And strove to head a rising of his fellows;
But, not succeeding, found in flight salvation,
And next, from what I hear, took up his station
In a remote woodside, just like a hermit,
Upon a banyan huge, where parrots permit
To share their noisy roost, a very Tartar.
His plots, oh! king, this uproar’s soul and heart are.
“The lapse of morals, which in part pervaded
Our lower orders, I’d long marked unaided:
Their ringleaders were beings sunk in excesses,
Who from neglect or sheer corrupt caprices
Had spoiled their previously becoming dresses,
Lawyers with half a gown and cap in creases,
Schoolmasters with their spectacles all shattered,
And geniuses in mantles ragged and tattered;
These looked with evil eye on all henceforward
Who kept their shoes and stockings neat and shining.
‘We wants our rights’ they whined, and still are whining.
