As I rode in front of my mother[12] and wondered at all the sight.
Then the streak of the pearly dawn—the flash of a sentinel’s gun,
The gallop and glint of horsemen who wheeled in the level sun,
The shots in the clear still morning, the white smoke’s eddying wreath,
Is this the same land that I live in, the dull dank air that I breathe?
And if I were forty years younger, with my life before me to choose,
I wouldn’t be lectured by Kafirs or bullied by fat Hindoos;
But I’d go to some far-off country where Musalmāns still are men,
Or take to the jungle like Chetoo, and die in the tiger’s den.