And Rustum gaz'd on 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 835
The spear, and drew it from his side, and eas'd
His wound's imperious[49] 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 pour'd, dim now, and soil'd, 840
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— 845
White, with eyes clos'd; 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 850
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 855
Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son.
As those black granite pillars, once high-rear'd
By Jemshid in Persepolis,[50] to bear
His house, now, mid their broken flights of steps,
Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side— 860
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 darken'd all; and a cold fog, with night,
Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, 865
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: 870
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 mov'd,
Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian[51] waste 875
Under the solitary moon: he flow'd
Right for the polar star, past Orgunje,[52]
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 880
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 Pamere,
A foil'd circuitous wanderer:—till at last 885
The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters[53] opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath'd stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
—Arnold.
[1] Oxus. One of the great rivers of central Asia, forming the boundary between Persia and Turan, or Tartary.
[2] Tartar. A general name given to the tribes in central Asia east of the Oxus.
[3] Peran-Wisa (Pe'ran-We'sa). The commander of the Tartar tribes which formed the army of King Afrasiab.
[4] Pamere. A plateau in central Asia.