And the black Toorkmun tents; and only drunk
The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend,
Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep,
The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream,
The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die.'

Then, with a heavy groan, Rustum bewailed:
'Oh, that its waves were flowing over me!
Oh, that I saw its grains of yellow silt
Roll tumbling in the current o'er my head!'

But, with a grave, mild voice, Sohrab replied: ‘Desire not that, my father! thou must live. For some are born to do great deeds, and live, As some are born to be obscured, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, And reap a second glory in thine age; Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine. But come! thou seest this great host of men Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these! Let me entreat for them; what have they done? They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star. Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.

But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, But carry me with thee to Seistan,

And place me on a bed, and mourn for me,

Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy friends.
And thou must lay me in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above my bones,
And plant a far-seen pillar over all.
That so the passing horseman on the waste
May see my tomb a great way off, and cry :
Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies there,
Whom his great father did in ignorance kill!
And I be not forgotten in my grave.'

And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied:'Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be; for I will burn my tents,

And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me,
And carry thee away to Seistan,

And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee,
With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends.
And I will lay thee in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above thy bones,
And plant a far-seen pillar over all,

And men shall not forget thee in thy grave.
And I will spare thy host; yea, let them go!
Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace!
What should I do with slaying any more?
For would that all whom I have ever slain
Might be once more alive; my bitterest foes,
And they who were called champions in their time,
And through whose death I won that fame I have
And I were nothing but a common man,

A poor, mean soldier, and without renown,
So thou mightest live too, my son, my son !
Or rather would that I, even I myself,
Might now be lying on this bloody sand,

Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, ·
Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou;
And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan;
And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine;
And say: O son, I weep thee not too sore,
For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end!
But now in blood and battles was my youth,
And full of blood and battles is my age,
And I shall never end this life of blood.'

Then, at the point of death, Sohrab replied:
'A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man!
But thou shalt yet have peace; only not now,
Not yet! but thou shalt have it on that day,
When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship,
Thou and the other peers of Kai Khosroo,
Returning home over the salt blue sea,

From laying thy dear master in his grave.'

And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said: 'Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure.'

He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him, and took The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased His wound's imperious anguish; but the blood Came welling from the open gash, and life

Flowed with the stream all down his cold white side

The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soiled,

Like the soiled tissue of white violets

Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank,
By children whom their nurses call with haste
Indoors from the sun's eye; his head drooped low,
His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay ·
White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps,
Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame,
Convulsed him back to life, he opened them,
And fixed them feebly on his father's face;
Till now all strength was ebbed, and from his limbs
Unwillingly the spirit fled away,

Regretting the warm mansion which it left,
And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world.
So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead;
And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak
Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son.
As those black granite pillars, once high-reared
By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear

His house, now mid their broken flights of steps
Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side —
So in the sand lay Rustum by his son.

And night came down over the solemn waste,
And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair,
And darkened all; and a cold fog, with night,
Crept from the Oxus.
Soon a hum arose,

As of a great assembly loosed, and fires

Began to twinkle through the fog; for now

Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal;
The Persians took it on the open sands
Southward, the Tartars by the river marge;
And Rustum and his son were left alone.

But the majestic river floated on,

Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste,
Under the solitary moon; — he flowed

Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè,

Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents; that for many a league
The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,
A foiled circuitous wanderer- till at last

The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright

And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY2

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,

Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropped grasses shoot another head;
But when the fields are still,

And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,

And only the white sheep are sometimes seen

Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green, Come, shepherd, and again renew the quest !

Here, where the reaper was at work of late —
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthern cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds his sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use
Here will I sit and wait,

While to my ear from uplands far away

The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the cornAll the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screened is this nook o'er the high, half-reaped field, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep;

And air-swept lindens yield.

Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August-sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of that Oxford scholar poor,
Of shining parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes,
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
Met him, and of his way of life inquired;
Whereat he answered, that the gypsy-crew,