My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say, "My Son!" Quick! quick! for number'd are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind. But it was writ in Heaven that this should be.' So said he and his voice releas'd the heart Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, And kiss'd him. And awe fell on both the hosts When they saw Rustum's grief: and Ruksh, the horse, With his head bowing to the ground, and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and mute woe First to the one then to the other mov'd His head, as if enquiring what their grief Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes, The big warm tears roll'd down, and cak'd the sand. But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and said: 'Ruksh, now thou grievest; but, O Ruksh, thy feet Should then have rotted on their nimble joints, When first they bore thy Master to this field.' But Sohrab look'd upon the horse and said: 'Is this then Ruksh? How often, in past days, My mother told me of thee, thou brave Steed! My terrible father's terrible horse; and said, That I should one day find thy lord and thee. Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane. O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, And snuff'd the breezes of my father's home. And thou hast trod the sands of Seistan, And seen the River of Helmund, and the Lake Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself Has often strok'd thy neck, and given thee food, Corn in a golden platter soak'd with wine, And said "O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!" but I Have never known my grandsire's furrow'd face, Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan, stream: But lodg'd among my father's foes, and seen 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.' And, with a heavy groan, Rustum replied : '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!' And, 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 obscur'd, 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 follow'd 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-hair'd Zal, and all thy friends. And thou must lay me in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above my bones, 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 I will spare thy host: yea, let them go: 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 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 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 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 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 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 highrear'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 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, 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 Rustum and his son were left alone. waste, Under the solitary moon: he flow'd Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunjè, notes emotion HARK! ah, the Nightingale! The tawny-throated! Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark-what pain! O Wanderer from a Grecian shore, Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn And the sweet tranquil Thames, Dost thou to-night behold Here, through the moonlight on this Eng THE SCHOLAR GIPSY There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while well exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly spied out their old friend among the gipsies; and he gave them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others: that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.' GLANVIL'S Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661. |