snow-hair’d 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 say—
Sohrab, the mighty Rostam’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, Rostam 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 Sistan,
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 call’d 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 Sistan;
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 Kay Khosrow,
Returning home over the salt blue sea,
From laying thy dear Master in his grave.”
And Rostam gaz’d 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 smil’d on him, and took
The spear, and drew it from his side, and eas’d
His wound’s imperious anguish: but the blood
Came welling from the open gash, and life
Flow’d with the stream: all down his cold white side
The crimson torrent ran, dim now, and soil’d,
Like the soil’d tissue of white violets
Left, freshly gather’d, on their native bank,
By romping children, whom their nurses call
From the hot fields at noon: his head droop’d 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,
Convuls’d him back to life, he open’d them,
And fix’d them feebly on his father’s face:
Till now all strength was ebb’d, 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 Rostam drew his horseman’s cloak
Down o’er his face, and sate by his dead son.
As those black granite pillars, once high-rear’d
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 Rostam by his son.
And night came down over the solemn waste,
And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair,
And darken’d all; and a cold fog, with night,
Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose,
As of a great assembly loos’d, and fires
Began to twinkle through the fog: for now
Both armies mov’d to camp, and took their meal:
The Persians took it on the open sands
Southward; the Tartars by the river marge:
And Rostam 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 mov’d,
Rejoicing, through the hush’d Chorasmian waste,
Under the solitary moon: he flow’d
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 parcell’d Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles—
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamir,
A foil’d circuitous wanderer:—till at last
The long’d-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath’d stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
The Scholar Gipsy30
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 cropp’d herbage 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-blanch’d 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 earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the 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 corn—
All the live murmur of a summer’s day.
Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d 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 pink convolvulus in tendrils creep:
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfum’d showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where
