The freebooting life of the Pindaris, unmitigated scoundrels though
they were, no doubt had great charms, and must often have been recalled
with regret by those who settled down to the quiet humdrum existence
of a cultivator. This feeling has been admirably depicted in Sir
Alfred Lyall's well-known poem, of which it will be permissible to
quote a short extract:
When I rode a Dekhani charger with the saddle-cloth gold-laced,
And a Persian sword and a twelve-foot spear and a pistol at
my waist.
It's many a year gone by now; and yet I often dream
Of a long dark march to the Jumna, of splashing across the stream,
Of the waning moon on the water and the spears in the dim starlight
As I rode in front of my mother [447] 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 Musalmans still are men,
Or take to the jungle like Chetoo, and die in the tiger's den.