HOME THOUGHTS FROM HIND.
1920.
Back in the years of youth, a thoughtless thruster,
I did adventure to the East and spurn
My native land, and foolishly entrust her
To other guardians pending my return;
And now time bears me to the second lustre,
And I am old and weary and I burn
To freshen memories waxing somewhat vague;
But men say, "Shun old England like the plague."
Lord knoweth Hind is not a place of pleasure
Nor such a land as men forsake with tears;
Lord knoweth how we venerate and treasure
The English memory down the Indian years;
Yet now the mail pours forth in flowing measure
England's un-Englishness, and in our ears
Echo the words of men returned from leave,
Describing Englands one can scarce believe.
Englands abandoned to the fleeting passions,
Feckless as Fez, hysterical as Gaul,
All nigger-music and fantastic fashions
(And not a house from Leith to London Wall);
Where food and coal are dealt you out in rations
And you can hardly raise a drink at all,
And tailors charge you twenty pounds a touch.
Is that a place for Nabobs? No, not much.
Better were Hind where troubles more or less stick
To one set style and do not drive you mad
With changes; where a roof and a domestic,
Petrol and usquebagh can still be had;
And one can trust the Taj and the Majestic
(Bombay hotels be these and none too bad)
To stand for culture in the hour of need
And stop one running utterly to seed.
Hind be it; as for Home—festina lente;
Hind be it and a station in the sun,
Wherein if peace abideth not nor plenty
At least you are not ruined and undone.
I am not coming home in 1920,
And maybe not in 1921;
If all the English England's dead and gone,
One can remember; one can carry on.
H.B.