60
Their flint artillery’s now a broken anchor:
But briefly raged the combat ’mid the boughs, and
Lo! on the ground lie trussed the rebel thousand.
Great was the exultation, as beseemed,
For such a victory won; but Glory’s chalice
The monarch’s noble spirit had not dimmed;
Pardon awaited who disowned their malice.
Mercy condoned e’en Vindragupta’s hate,
His sentence being to loss of tail commuted.
Thus fell the last frail bridge to things embruted,
The last faint shadow in that perfect State.
Too cold of hue is human speech to print
The proud procession home in fitting tint:
The royal entry to the civic bowers:
How white-robed cat-apes strewed the way with flowers
Before the royal palfrey: how, proud mortal,
The Mayor, with speech laboriously studied,
Before a palm-wove arch of triumph’s portal,
Put all on tenterhooks till he’d concluded:
How clouds of onlookers obscured the gables:
Guilds flanked the streets behind the buntinged cables.
How at the shouts of rapture broad earth shivered,
And tears of transport from each eyelid quivered
As Hanuman rode in and bowed so blandly,
With head and hand to all sides: wreaths of laurel
Gigantic from his shoulder streaming grandly,
Down to the very fetlocks of his sorrel,
From which two watered satin ribbons, spangled
With stars and plates of gold leaf, proudly dangled:
On one, “Divine Flametta, thanks!” was graved.
On th’ other, “Of thy little foot th’ enslaved.”
Behind the king the King’s Own proudly paced,
