I Made Haste To Cross The Bridge And To Hear The Palms In The Wind On
The Far Side.
They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts,
and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed
as the thrust of the Trades.
Then came a funeral - the sheeted corpse on
the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he
is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of
the household - either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners
go too long weeping and hungry) - the women behind, tossing their arms
and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high.
They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore
on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the
Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen,
shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand
pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase,
might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they
wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting
high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three
purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as
voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be
compared with that of Bombay.
Hans Breitmann writes somewhere:
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