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.”
Here the poem ought to have ended; but Mr Arnold wishes to try his hand at that very ancient and hackneyed subject, the description of the course of a river; and, the Oxus being conveniently near, he embarks on a voyage for the Arab Sea.
“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 hush’d Chorasmian waste,