KISHEN KOWER.*[1]
"Bold as the falcon that faces the sun,
Wild as the streams when in torrents they run,
Fierce as the flame when the jungle’s on fire,
Are the chieftains who call on the day-star as Sire.
Since the Moghuls were driven from stately Mandoo,†Jumna Musjid, Mandoo
And left but their ruins their reign to renew,
Those hills have paid tribute to no foreign lord,
And their children have kept what they won by the sword.
Yet downcast each forehead, a sullen dismay
At Oudeypoor reigns in the Durbar‡ [2]to-day,
For bootless the struggle, and weary the fight,
Which Adjeit Sing pictures with frown black as night:—
"Oh fatal the hour, when Makundra's dark pass§ Pass of Makundra
Saw the blood of our bravest sink red in the grass;
And the gifts which were destined to honour the bride,
By the contest of rivals in crimson were dyed.
Where are the warriors who once wont to stand
The glory and rampart of Rajahstan’s land?
Ask of the hills for their young and their brave,
They will point to the valleys beneath as their grave.‖
The mother sits pale by her desolate hearth,
And weeps o’er the infant an orphan from birth;
While the eldest boy watches the dust on the spear,
Which as yet his weak hand is unable to rear.
The fruit is ungathered, the harvest unsown,
And the vulture exults o’er our fields as his own:Perawa
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- ↑ * Kishen Kower.—The history of Kishen Kower is of a later period than, properly speaking, belongs to my story. I trust the anachronism will be its own excuse. Without entering into the many intrigues to which she was sacrificed, it is only needful to observe, that her hand was claimed by the kings of Jeypour and Joudpour. A destructive war was the consequence, for marriage with the one must incur the enmity of the other. A weak father, and an ambitious minister, led to the immolation of the beautiful victim; an unmarried daughter being held to be the greatest possible disgrace.
- ↑ ‡ The court, or divan, to use a term familiar to most English readers.
