Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online

                                 POEMS

                                  BY

                            MATTHEW ARNOLD.

                      _NEW AND COMPLETE EDITION._

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                               NEW YORK:

                       THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.,

                          NO. 13 ASTOR PLACE.

CONTENTS.

_EARLY POEMS._

                                                                    PAGE

SONNETS:--

  Quiet Work                                                           1

  To a Friend                                                          2

  Shakspeare                                                           2

  Written in Emerson’s Essays                                          3

  Written in Butler’s Sermons                                          3

  To the Duke of Wellington                                            4

  “In Harmony with Nature”                                             5

  To George Cruikshank                                                 5

  To a Republican Friend, 1848                                         6

  Continued                                                            7

  Religious Isolation                                                  7

MYCERINUS                                                              8

THE CHURCH OF BROU:--

    I. The Castle                                                     12

   II. The Church                                                     16

  III. The Tomb                                                       18

A MODERN SAPPHO                                                       19

REQUIESCAT                                                            21

YOUTH AND CALM                                                        22

A MEMORY-PICTURE                                                      23

THE NEW SIRENS                                                        25

THE VOICE                                                             34

YOUTH’S AGITATIONS                                                    36

THE WORLD’S TRIUMPHS                                                  36

STAGIRIUS                                                             37

HUMAN LIFE                                                            39

TO A GYPSY CHILD BY THE SEASHORE                                      40

A QUESTION                                                            43

IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS                                                   43

THE WORLD AND THE QUIETIST                                            45

THE SECOND BEST                                                       46

CONSOLATION                                                           47

RESIGNATION                                                           49

_NARRATIVE POEMS._

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM                                                     59

THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA                                              86

BALDER DEAD:--

    I. Sending                                                        94

  II. Journey to the Dead                                            104

  III. Funeral                                                       114

TRISTRAM AND ISEULT:--

    I. Tristram                                                      131

   II. Iseult of Ireland                                             143

  III. Iseult of Brittany                                            150

SAINT BRANDAN                                                        157

THE NECKAN                                                           160

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN                                                  162

_SONNETS._

AUSTERITY OF POETRY                                                  167

A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD                                                167

RACHEL: I., II., III                                                 168

WORLDLY PLACE                                                        170

EAST LONDON                                                          170

WEST LONDON                                                          171

EAST AND WEST                                                        171

THE BETTER PART                                                      172

THE DIVINITY                                                         172

IMMORTALITY                                                          173

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID                                       173

MONICA’S LAST PRAYER                                                 174

_LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POEMS._

SWITZERLAND:--

    I. Meeting                                                       175

   II. Parting                                                       176

  III. A Farewell                                                    179

   IV. Isolation. To Marguerite                                      182

    V. To Marguerite. Continued                                      183

   VI. Absence                                                       184

  VII. The Terrace at Berne                                          185

THE STRAYED REVELLER                                                 187

FRAGMENT OF AN “ANTIGONE”                                            197

FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A “DEJANEIRA”                                  201

EARLY DEATH AND FAME                                                 202

PHILOMELA                                                            202

URANIA                                                               204

EUPHROSYNE                                                           205

CALAIS SANDS                                                         206

FADED LEAVES:--

    I. The River                                                     207

   II. Too Late                                                      208

  III. Separation                                                    208

   IV. On the Rhine                                                  209

    V. Longing                                                       209

DESPONDENCY                                                          210

SELF-DECEPTION                                                       210

DOVER BEACH                                                          211

GROWING OLD                                                          213

THE PROGRESS OF POESY                                                214

PIS ALLER                                                            214

THE LAST WORD                                                        215

A NAMELESS EPITAPH                                                   215

EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA                                                   216

BACCHANALIA; OR, THE NEW AGE                                         254

EPILOGUE TO LESSING’S LAOCOÖN                                        258

PERSISTENCY OF POETRY                                                264

A CAUTION TO POETS                                                   264

THE YOUTH OF NATURE                                                  265

THE YOUTH OF MAN                                                     269

PALLADIUM                                                            273

PROGRESS                                                             273

REVOLUTIONS                                                          275

SELF-DEPENDENCE                                                      276

MORALITY                                                             277

A SUMMER NIGHT                                                       278

THE BURIED LIFE                                                      281

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS                                  284

A WISH                                                               286

THE FUTURE                                                           288

_ELEGIAC POEMS._

THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY                                                    291

THYRSIS                                                              299

MEMORIAL VERSES                                                      307

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF EDWARD QUILLINAN                                310

STANZAS FROM CARNAC                                                  311

A SOUTHERN NIGHT                                                     312

HAWORTH CHURCHYARD                                                   317

EPILOGUE                                                             321

RUGBY CHAPEL                                                         321

HEINE’S GRAVE                                                        328

STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE                                   335

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF “OBERMANN”                        342

OBERMANN ONCE MORE                                                   348

NOTES                                                                361

EARLY POEMS.

_SONNETS._

QUIET WORK.

    One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
    One lesson which in every wind is blown,
    One lesson of two duties kept at one
    Though the loud world proclaim their enmity,--

    Of toil unsevered from tranquillity;
    Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows
    Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,
    Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.

    Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
    Man’s senseless uproar mingling with his toil,
    Still do thy quiet ministers move on,

    Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
    Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
    Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone.

TO A FRIEND.

    Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?--
    He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
    Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,[1]
    And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.

    Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
    That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
    Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son
    Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But be his

    My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
    From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
    Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;

    Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
    The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
    Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.

SHAKSPEARE.

    Others abide our question. Thou art free.
    We ask and ask. Thou smilest, and art still,
    Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
    Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

    Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
    Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
    Spares but the cloudy border of his base
    To the foiled searching of mortality;

    And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
    Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honored, self-secure,
    Didst tread on earth unguessed at.--Better so!

    All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
    All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
    Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

WRITTEN IN EMERSON’S ESSAYS.

    “O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world,
    That thou canst hear, and hearing hold thy way!
    A voice oracular hath pealed to-day,
    To-day a hero’s banner is unfurled;

    Hast thou no lip for welcome?”--So I said.
    Man after man, the world smiled and passed by;
    A smile of wistful incredulity,
    As though one spake of life unto the dead,--

    Scornful, and strange, and sorrowful, and full
    Of bitter knowledge. Yet the will is free;
    Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful;

    The seeds of godlike power are in us still;
    Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!--
    Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?

WRITTEN IN BUTLER’S SERMONS.

    Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
    Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control,--
    So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,
    Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.

    Vain labor! Deep and broad, where none may see,
    Spring the foundations of that shadowy throne
    Where man’s one nature, queen-like, sits alone,
    Centred in a majestic unity;

    And rays her powers, like sister-islands seen
    Linking their coral arms under the sea,
    Or clustered peaks with plunging gulfs between,

    Spanned by aërial arches all of gold,
    Whereo’er the chariot-wheels of life are rolled
    In cloudy circles to eternity.

TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED.

    Because thou hast believed, the wheels of life
    Stand never idle, but go always round;
    Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
    Moved only; but by genius, in the strife

    Of all its chafing torrents after thaw,
    Urged; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand,
    The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand;
    And, in this vision of the general law,

    Hast labored, but with purpose; hast become
    Laborious, persevering, serious, firm,--
    For this, thy track across the fretful foam

    Of vehement actions without scope or term,
    Called history, keeps a splendor; due to wit,
    Which saw one clew to life, and followed it.

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE.

TO A PREACHER.

    “In harmony with Nature?” Restless fool,
    Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
    When true, the last impossibility,--
    To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!

    Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
    And in that _more_ lie all his hopes of good.
    Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
    Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;

    Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;
    Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
    Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.

    Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
    Nature and man can never be fast friends.
    Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!

TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

ON SEEING, IN THE COUNTRY, HIS PICTURE OF “THE BOTTLE.”

    Artist, whose hand, with horror winged, hath torn
    From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung
    The prodigy of full-blown crime among
    Valleys and men to middle fortune born,
    Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn,--
    Say, what shall calm us when such guests intrude
    Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
    Shall breathless glades, cheered by shy Dian’s horn,

    Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The soul
    Breasts her own griefs; and, urged too fiercely, says,
    “Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man

    May be by man effaced; man can control
    To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
    Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he _can_.”

TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848.

    God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
    Those virtues, prized and practised by too few,
    But prized, but loved, but eminent in you,
    Man’s fundamental life; if to despise

    The barren optimistic sophistries
    Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
    Teaches the limit of the just and true
    (And for such doing they require not eyes);

    If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
    Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted;
    If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow

    The armies of the homeless and unfed,--
    If these are yours, if this is what you are,
    Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.

CONTINUED.

    Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
    Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
    Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,--
    France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme;

    Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream,
    Is on all sides o’ershadowed by the high
    Uno’erleaped mountains of necessity,
    Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.

    Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
    When, bursting through the network superposed
    By selfish occupation,--plot and plan,

    Lust, avarice, envy,--liberated man,
    All difference with his fellow-mortal closed,
    Shall be left standing face to face with God.

RELIGIOUS ISOLATION.

TO THE SAME FRIEND.

    Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
    Ever in their own eager pastime bent
    To make the incurious bystander, intent
    On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own,--

    Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
    Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
    (Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
    Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.

    What though the holy secret, which moulds thee,
    Moulds not the solid earth? though never winds
    Have whispered it to the complaining sea,

    Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds?
    To its own impulse every creature stirs:
    Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!

MYCERINUS.[2]

    “Not by the justice that my father spurned,
    Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
    Altars unfed and temples overturned,
    Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
    Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
    Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

    “I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
    My crime,--that, rapt in reverential awe,
    I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
    Of youth, self-governed, at the feet of Law;
    Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
    By contemplation of diviner things.

    “My father loved injustice, and lived long;
    Crowned with gray hairs he died, and full of sway.
    I loved the good he scorned, and hated wrong--
    The gods declare my recompense to-day.
    I looked for life more lasting, rule more high;
    And when six years are measured, lo, I die!

    “Yet surely, O my people, did I deem
    Man’s justice from the all-just gods was given;
    A light that from some upper fount did beam,
    Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven;
    A light that, shining from the blest abodes,
    Did shadow somewhat of the life of gods.

    “Mere phantoms of man’s self-tormenting heart,
    Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed!
    Vain dreams, which quench our pleasures, then depart,
    When the duped soul, self-mastered, claims its meed;
    When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,
    Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close!

    “Seems it so light a thing, then, austere powers,
    To spurn man’s common lure, life’s pleasant things?
    Seems there no joy in dances crowned with flowers,
    Love free to range, and regal banquetings?
    Bend ye on these indeed an unmoved eye,
    Not gods, but ghosts, in frozen apathy?

    “Or is it that some force, too stern, too strong,
    Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile,
    Bears earth and heaven and men and gods along,
    Like the broad volume of the insurgent Nile?
    And the great powers we serve, themselves may be
    Slaves of a tyrannous necessity?

    “Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars,
    Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,
    And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,
    Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?
    Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen,
    Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene?

    “Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,
    Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream?
    Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,
    Blind divinations of a will supreme;
    Lost labor! when the circumambient gloom
    But hides, if gods, gods careless of our doom?

    “The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
    My sand runs short; and as yon star-shot ray,
    Hemmed by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
    Now, as the barrier closes, dies away,--
    Even so do past and future intertwine,
    Blotting this six years’ space, which yet is mine.

    “Six years,--six little years,--six drops of time!
    Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
    And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
    And languid pleasure fade and flower again,
    And the dull gods behold, ere these are flown,
    Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.

    “Into the silence of the groves and woods
    I will go forth; though something would I say,--
    Something,--yet what, I know not: for the gods
    The doom they pass revoke not nor delay;
    And prayers and gifts and tears are fruitless all,
    And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.

    “Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
    I go, and I return not. But the will
    Of the great gods is plain; and ye must bring
    Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
    Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,--
    The praise of gods, rich boon! and length of days.”

   --So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn;
    And one loud cry of grief and of amaze
    Broke from his sorrowing people; so he spake,
    And turning, left them there: and with brief pause,
    Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way
    To the cool region of the groves he loved.
    There by the river-banks he wandered on,
    From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees,
    Their smooth tops shining sunward, and beneath
    Burying their unsunned stems in grass and flowers;
    Where in one dream the feverish time of youth
    Might fade in slumber, and the feet of joy
    Might wander all day long and never tire.
    Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn,
    Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down,
    A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,
    From tree to tree all through the twinkling grove,
    Revealing all the tumult of the feast,--
    Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine;
    While the deep-burnished foliage overhead
    Splintered the silver arrows of the moon.
      It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
    From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
    Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man
    Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale shape,
    Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems,
    Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl,
    Whispering, _A little space, and thou art mine!_
    It may be, on that joyless feast his eye
    Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within,
    Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength,
    And by that silent knowledge, day by day,
    Was calmed, ennobled, comforted, sustained.
    It may be; but not less his brow was smooth,
    And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom,
    And his mirth quailed not at the mild reproof
    Sighed out by winter’s sad tranquillity;
    Nor, palled with its own fulness, ebbed and died
    In the rich languor of long summer-days;
    Nor withered when the palm-tree plumes, that roofed
    With their mild dark his grassy banquet-hall,
    Bent to the cold winds of the showerless spring;
    No, nor grew dark when autumn brought the clouds.
      So six long years he revelled, night and day.
    And when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound
    Sometimes from the grove’s centre echoes came,
    To tell his wondering people of their king;
    In the still night, across the steaming flats,
    Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile.

_THE CHURCH OF BROU._

I.

The Castle.

    Down the Savoy valleys sounding,
      Echoing round this castle old,
    ’Mid the distant mountain-chalets
      Hark! what bell for church is tolled?

    In the bright October morning
      Savoy’s Duke had left his bride.
    From the castle, past the drawbridge,
      Flowed the hunters’ merry tide.

    Steeds are neighing, gallants glittering.
      Gay, her smiling lord to greet,
    From her mullioned chamber-casement
      Smiles the Duchess Marguerite.

    From Vienna, by the Danube,
      Here she came, a bride, in spring.
    Now the autumn crisps the forest;
      Hunters gather, bugles ring.

    Hounds are pulling, prickers swearing,
      Horses fret, and boar-spears glance.
    Off!--They sweep the marshy forests,
      Westward on the side of France.

    Hark! the game’s on foot; they scatter!
      Down the forest-ridings lone,
    Furious, single horsemen gallop.
      Hark! a shout--a crash--a groan!

    Pale and breathless, came the hunters--
      On the turf dead lies the boar.
    God! the duke lies stretched beside him,
      Senseless, weltering in his gore.

    In the dull October evening,
      Down the leaf-strewn forest-road,
    To the castle, past the drawbridge,
      Came the hunters with their load.

    In the hall, with sconces blazing,
      Ladies waiting round her seat,
    Clothed in smiles, beneath the dais
      Sate the Duchess Marguerite.

    Hark! below the gates unbarring!
      Tramp of men, and quick commands!
    “’Tis my lord come back from hunting;”
      And the duchess claps her hands.

    Slow and tired, came the hunters;
      Stopped in darkness in the court.
    “Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters!
      To the hall! What sport, what sport?”

    Slow they entered with their master;
      In the hall they laid him down.
    On his coat were leaves and blood-stains,
      On his brow an angry frown.

    Dead her princely youthful husband
      Lay before his youthful wife,
    Bloody ’neath the flaring sconces--
      And the sight froze all her life.

    In Vienna, by the Danube,
      Kings hold revel, gallants meet.
    Gay of old amid the gayest
      Was the Duchess Marguerite.

    In Vienna, by the Danube,
      Feast and dance her youth beguiled.
    Till that hour she never sorrowed;
      But from then she never smiled.

    ’Mid the Savoy mountain-valleys,
      Far from town or haunt of man,
    Stands a lonely church, unfinished,
      Which the Duchess Maud began.

    Old, that duchess stern began it,
      In gray age, with palsied hands;
    But she died while it was building,
      And the church unfinished stands,--

    Stands as erst the builders left it,
      When she sank into her grave;
    Mountain greensward paves the chancel,
      Harebells flower in the nave.

    “In my castle all is sorrow,”
      Said the Duchess Marguerite then:
    “Guide me, some one, to the mountain;
      We will build the church again.”

    Sandalled palmers, faring homeward,
      Austrian knights from Syria came.
    “Austrian wanderers bring, O warders!
      Homage to your Austrian dame.”

    From the gate the warders answered,--
      “Gone, O knights, is she you knew!
    Dead our duke, and gone his duchess;
      Seek her at the church of Brou.”

    Austrian knights and march-worn palmers
      Climb the winding mountain-way;
    Reach the valley, where the fabric
      Rises higher day by day.

    Stones are sawing, hammers ringing;
      On the work the bright sun shines;
    In the Savoy mountain-meadows,
      By the stream, below the pines.

    On her palfrey white the duchess
      Sate, and watched her working train,--
    Flemish carvers, Lombard gilders,
      German masons, smiths from Spain.

    Clad in black, on her white palfrey,
      Her old architect beside,--
    There they found her in the mountains,
      Morn and noon and eventide.

    There she sate, and watched the builders,
      Till the church was roofed and done;
    Last of all, the builders reared her
      In the nave a tomb of stone.

    On the tomb two forms they sculptured,
      Lifelike in the marble pale,--
    One, the duke in helm and armor;
      One, the duchess in her veil.

    Round the tomb the carved stone fret-work
      Was at Easter-tide put on.
    Then the duchess closed her labors;
      And she died at the St. John.

II.

The Church.

    Upon the glistening leaden roof
    Of the new pile, the sunlight shines;
      The stream goes leaping by.
    The hills are clothed with pines sun-proof;
    ’Mid bright green fields, below the pines,
      Stands the church on high.
    What church is this, from men aloof?
    ’Tis the Church of Brou.

    At sunrise, from their dewy lair
    Crossing the stream, the kine are seen
      Round the wall to stray,--
    The churchyard wall that clips the square
    Of open hill-sward fresh and green
      Where last year they lay.
    But all things now are ordered fair
    Round the Church of Brou.

    On Sundays, at the matin-chime,
    The Alpine peasants, two and three,
      Climb up here to pray;
    Burghers and dames, at summer’s prime,
    Ride out to church from Chambery,
      Dight with mantles gay.
    But else it is a lonely time
    Round the Church of Brou.

    On Sundays, too, a priest doth come
    From the walled town beyond the pass,
      Down the mountain-way;
    And then you hear the organ’s hum,
    You hear the white-robed priest say mass,
      And the people pray.
    But else the woods and fields are dumb
    Round the Church of Brou.

    And after church, when mass is done,
    The people to the nave repair
      Round the tomb to stray;
    And marvel at the forms of stone,
    And praise the chiselled broideries rare--
      Then they drop away.
    The princely pair are left alone
    In the Church of Brou.

III.

The Tomb.

    So rest, forever rest, O princely pair!
    In your high church, ’mid the still mountain-air,
    Where horn, and hound, and vassals, never come.
    Only the blessed saints are smiling dumb
    From the rich painted windows of the nave
    On aisle, and transept, and your marble grave;
    Where thou, young prince, shalt never more arise
    From the fringed mattress where thy duchess lies,
    On autumn-mornings, when the bugle sounds,
    And ride across the drawbridge with thy hounds
    To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve;
    And thou, O princess, shalt no more receive,
    Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state,
    The jaded hunters with their bloody freight,
    Coming benighted to the castle-gate.
      So sleep, forever sleep, O marble pair!
    Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair
    On the carved western front a flood of light
    Streams from the setting sun, and colors bright
    Prophets, transfigured saints, and martyrs brave,
    In the vast western window of the nave;
    And on the pavement round the tomb there glints
    A checker-work of glowing sapphire-tints,
    And amethyst, and ruby,--then unclose
    Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose,
    And from your broidered pillows lift your heads,
    And rise upon your cold white marble beds;
    And looking down on the warm rosy tints
    Which checker, at your feet, the illumined flints,
    Say, _What is this? we are in bliss--forgiven--
    Behold the pavement of the courts of heaven!_
    Or let it be on autumn-nights, when rain
    Doth rustlingly above your heads complain
    On the smooth leaden roof, and on the walls
    Shedding her pensive light at intervals
    The moon through the clere-story windows shines,
    And the wind washes through the mountain-pines,--
    Then, gazing up ’mid the dim pillars high,
    The foliaged marble forest where ye lie,
    _Hush_, ye will say, _it is eternity!
    This is the glimmering verge of heaven, and these
    The columns of the heavenly palaces._
    And in the sweeping of the wind your ear
    The passage of the angels’ wings will hear,
    And on the lichen-crusted leads above
    The rustle of the eternal rain of love.

_A MODERN SAPPHO._

    They are gone--all is still! Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?
      Nothing stirs on the lawn but the quick lilac-shade.

    Far up shines the house, and beneath flows the river:
      Here lean, my head, on this cold balustrade!

    Ere he come,--ere the boat by the shining-branched border
      Of dark elms shoot round, dropping down the proud stream,--
    Let me pause, let me strive, in myself make some order,
      Ere their boat-music sound, ere their broidered flags gleam.

    Last night we stood earnestly talking together:
      She entered--that moment his eyes turned from me!
    Fastened on her dark hair, and her wreath of white heather.
      As yesterday was, so to-morrow will be.

    Their love, let me know, must grow strong and yet stronger,
      Their passion burn more, ere it ceases to burn.
    They must love--while they must! but the hearts that love longer
      Are rare--ah! most loves but flow once, and return.

    I shall suffer--but they will outlive their affection;
      I shall weep--but their love will be cooling; and he,
    As he drifts to fatigue, discontent, and dejection,
      Will be brought, thou poor heart, how much nearer to thee!

    For cold is his eye to mere beauty, who, breaking
      The strong band which passion around him hath furled,
    Disenchanted by habit, and newly awaking,
      Looks languidly round on a gloom-buried world.

    Through that gloom he will see but a shadow appearing,
      Perceive but a voice as I come to his side;
   --But deeper their voice grows, and nobler their bearing,
      Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.

    So, to wait! But what notes down the wind, hark! are driving?
      ’Tis he! ’tis their flag, shooting round by the trees!
   --Let my turn, if it _will_ come, be swift in arriving!
      Ah! hope cannot long lighten torments like these.

    Hast thou yet dealt him, O life, thy full measure?
      World, have thy children yet bowed at his knee?
    Hast thou with myrtle-leaf crowned him, O pleasure?
    --Crown, crown him quickly, and leave him for me.

_REQUIESCAT._

    Strew on her roses, roses,
      And never a spray of yew:
    In quiet she reposes;
      Ah! would that I did too!

    Her mirth the world required;
      She bathed it in smiles of glee.
    But her heart was tired, tired,
      And now they let her be.

    Her life was turning, turning,
      In mazes of heat and sound;
    But for peace her soul was yearning,
      And now peace laps her round.

    Her cabined, ample spirit,
      It fluttered and failed for breath;
    To-night it doth inherit
      The vasty hall of death.

_YOUTH AND CALM._

    ’Tis death! and peace indeed is here,
    And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
    There’s nothing can dismarble now
    The smoothness of that limpid brow.
    But is a calm like this, in truth,
    The crowning end of life and youth?
    And when this boon rewards the dead,
    Are all debts paid, has all been said?
    And is the heart of youth so light,
    Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
    Because on its hot brow there blows
    A wind of promise and repose
    From the far grave, to which it goes;
    Because it has the hope to come,
    One day, to harbor in the tomb?
    Ah, no! the bliss youth dreams is one
    For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
    For feeling nerves and living breath;
    Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
    It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
    More grateful than this marble sleep;
    It hears a voice within it tell,--
    _Calm’s not life’s crown, though calm is well_.
    ’Tis all, perhaps, which man acquires,
    But ’tis not what our youth desires.

_A MEMORY-PICTURE._

    Laugh, my friends, and without blame
    Lightly quit what lightly came;
    Rich to-morrow as to-day,
    Spend as madly as you may!
    I, with little land to stir,
    Am the exacter laborer.
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Once I said, “A face is gone
    If too hotly mused upon;
    And our best impressions are
    Those that do themselves repair.”
    Many a face I so let flee--
    Ah!-is faded utterly.
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Marguerite says, “As last year went,
    So the coming year’ll be spent;
    Some day next year, I shall be,
    Entering heedless, kissed by thee.”
    Ah, I hope! yet, once away,
    What may chain us, who can say?
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Paint that lilac kerchief, bound
    Her soft face, her hair around;
    Tied under the archest chin
    Mockery ever ambushed in.
    Let the fluttering fringes streak
    All her pale, sweet-rounded cheek.
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Paint that figure’s pliant grace
    As she toward me leaned her face,
    Half refused and half resigned,
    Murmuring, “Art thou still unkind?”
    Many a broken promise then
    Was new made--to break again.
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Paint those eyes, so blue, so kind,
    Eager tell-tales of her mind;
    Paint, with their impetuous stress
    Of inquiring tenderness,
    Those frank eyes, where deep doth be
    An angelic gravity.
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    What! my friends, these feeble lines
    Show, you say, my love declines?
    To paint ill as I have done,
    Proves forgetfulness begun?
    Time’s gay minions, pleased you see,
    Time, your master, governs me;
      Pleased, you mock the fruitless cry,--
      “Quick, thy tablets, Memory!”

    Ah, too true! Time’s current strong
    Leaves us true to nothing long.
    Yet, if little stays with man,
    Ah, retain we all we can!
    If the clear impression dies,
    Ah, the dim remembrance prize!
      Ere the parting hour go by,
      Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

_THE NEW SIRENS._

      In the cedar-shadow sleeping,
      Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
      Late at eve had lured me, creeping
      From your darkened palace rooms,--
      I, who in your train at morning
      Strolled and sang with joyful mind,
      Heard, in slumber, sounds of warning;
    Saw the hoarse boughs labor in the wind.

      Who are they, O pensive Graces,
      (For I dreamed they wore your forms)
      Who on shores and sea-washed places
      Scoop the shelves and fret the storms?
      Who, when ships are that way tending,
      Troop across the flushing sands,
      To all reefs and narrows wending,
    With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands?

      Yet I see, the howling levels
      Of the deep are not your lair;
      And your tragic-vaunted revels
      Are less lonely than they were.
      Like those kings with treasure steering
      From the jewelled lands of dawn,
      Troops, with gold and gifts, appearing,
    Stream all day through your enchanted lawn.

      And we too, from upland valleys,
      Where some Muse with half-curved frown
      Leans her ear to your mad sallies
      Which the charmed winds never drown;
      By faint music guided, ranging
      The scared glens, we wandered on,
      Left our awful laurels hanging,
    And came heaped with myrtles to your throne.

      From the dragon-wardered fountains
      Where the springs of knowledge are,
      From the watchers on the mountains,
      And the bright and morning star;
      We are exiles, we are falling,
      We have lost them at your call--
      O ye false ones, at your calling
    Seeking ceiled chambers and a palace-hall!

      Are the accents of your luring
      More melodious than of yore?
      Are those frail forms more enduring
      Than the charms Ulysses bore?
      That we sought you with rejoicings,
      Till at evening we descry
      At a pause of Siren voicings
    These vexed branches and this howling sky?...

      Oh, your pardon! The uncouthness
      Of that primal age is gone,
      And the skin of dazzling smoothness
      Screens not now a heart of stone.
      Love has flushed those cruel faces;
      And those slackened arms forego
      The delight of death-embraces,
    And yon whitening bone-mounds do not grow.

      “Ah!” you say; “the large appearance
      Of man’s labor is but vain,
      And we plead as stanch adherence
      Due to pleasure as to pain.”
      Pointing to earth’s careworn creatures,
      “Come,” you murmur with a sigh:
      “Ah! we own diviner features,
    Loftier bearing, and a prouder eye.

      “Come,” you say, “the hours were dreary;
      Life without love does not fade;
      Vain it wastes, and we grew weary
      In the slumbrous cedarn shade.
      Round our hearts with long caresses,
      With low sighings, Silence stole,
      And her load of steaming tresses
    Weighed, like Ossa, on the aery soul.

      “Come,” you say, “the soul is fainting
      Till she search and learn her own,
      And the wisdom of man’s painting
      Leaves her riddle half unknown.
      Come,” you say, “the brain is seeking,
      While the princely heart is dead;
      Yet this gleaned, when gods were speaking,
    Rarer secrets than the toiling head.

      “Come,” you say, “opinion trembles,
      Judgment shifts, convictions go;
      Life dries up, the heart dissembles:
      Only, what we feel, we know.
      Hath your wisdom known emotions?
      Will it weep our burning tears?
      Hath it drunk of our love-potions
    Crowning moments with the weight of years?”

      I am dumb. Alas! too soon all
      Man’s grave reasons disappear!
      Yet, I think, at God’s tribunal
      Some large answer you shall hear.
      But for me, my thoughts are straying
      Where at sunrise, through your vines,
      On these lawns I saw you playing,
    Hanging garlands on your odorous pines;

      When your showering locks inwound you,
      And your heavenly eyes shone through;
      When the pine-boughs yielded round you,
      And your brows were starred with dew;
      And immortal forms, to meet you,
      Down the statued alleys came,
      And through golden horns, to greet you,
    Blew such music as a god may frame.

      Yes, I muse! And if the dawning
      Into daylight never grew,
      If the glistering wings of morning
      On the dry noon shook their dew,
      If the fits of joy were longer,
      Or the day were sooner done,
      Or, perhaps, if hope were stronger,
    No weak nursling of an earthly sun ...
        Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens,
            Dusk the hall with yew!

      For a bound was set to meetings,
      And the sombre day dragged on;
      And the burst of joyful greetings,
      And the joyful dawn, were gone.
      For the eye grows filled with gazing,
      And on raptures follow calms;
      And those warm locks men were praising
    Drooped, unbraided, on your listless arms.

      Storms unsmoothed your folded valleys,
      And made all your cedars frown;
      Leaves were whirling in the alleys
      Which your lovers wandered down.
    --Sitting cheerless in your bowers,
      The hands propping the sunk head,
      Do they gall you, the long hours,
    And the hungry thought that must be fed?

      Is the pleasure that is tasted
      Patient of a long review?
      Will the fire joy hath wasted,
      Mused on, warm the heart anew?
    --Or, are those old thoughts returning,
      Guests the dull sense never knew,
      Stars, set deep, yet inly burning,
    Germs, your untrimmed passion overgrew?

      Once, like us, you took your station,
      Watchers for a purer fire;
      But you drooped in expectation,
      And you wearied in desire.
      When the first rose flush was steeping
      All the frore peak’s awful crown,
      Shepherds say, they found you sleeping
    In some windless valley, farther down.

      Then you wept, and slowly raising
      Your dozed eyelids, sought again,
      Half in doubt, they say, and gazing
      Sadly back, the seats of men;
      Snatched a turbid inspiration
      From some transient earthly sun,
      And proclaimed your vain ovation
    For those mimic raptures you had won....

      With a sad, majestic motion,
      With a stately, slow surprise,
      From their earthward-bound devotion
      Lifting up your languid eyes--
      Would you freeze my louder boldness,
      Dumbly smiling as you go,
      One faint frown of distant coldness
    Flitting fast across each marble brow?

      Do I brighten at your sorrow,
      O sweet pleaders? doth my lot
      Find assurance in to-morrow
      Of one joy which you have not?
      Oh, speak once, and shame my sadness!
      Let this sobbing, Phrygian strain,
      Mocked and baffled by your gladness,
    Mar the music of your feasts in vain!

      Scent, and song, and light, and flowers!
      Gust on gust, the harsh winds blow--
      Come, bind up those ringlet showers!
      Roses for that dreaming brow!
      Come, once more that ancient lightness,
      Glancing feet, and eager eyes!
      Let your broad lamps flash the brightness
    Which the sorrow-stricken day denies.

      Through black depths of serried shadows,
      Up cold aisles of buried glade;
      In the mist of river-meadows
      Where the looming deer are laid;
      From your dazzled windows streaming,
      From your humming festal room,
      Deep and far, a broken gleaming
    Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.

      Where I stand, the grass is glowing:
      Doubtless you are passing fair!
      But I hear the north wind blowing,
      And I feel the cold night-air,
      Can I look on your sweet faces,
      And your proud heads backward thrown,
      From this dusk of leaf-strewn places
    With the dumb woods and the night alone?

      Yet, indeed, this flux of guesses,--
      Mad delight, and frozen calms,--
      Mirth to-day, and vine-bound tresses,
      And to-morrow--folded palms;
      Is this all? this balanced measure?
      Could life run no happier way?
      Joyous at the height of pleasure,
    Passive at the nadir of dismay?

      But, indeed, this proud possession,
      This far-reaching, magic chain,
      Linking in a mad succession
      Fits of joy and fits of pain,--
      Have you seen it at the closing?
      Have you tracked its clouded ways?
      Can your eyes, while fools are dozing,
    Drop, with mine, adown life’s latter days?

      When a dreary light is wading
      Through this waste of sunless greens,
      When the flashing lights are fading
      On the peerless cheek of queens,
      When the mean shall no more sorrow,
      And the proudest no more smile;
      While the dawning of the morrow
    Widens slowly westward all that while?

      Then, when change itself is over,
      When the slow tide sets one way,
      Shall you find the radiant lover,
      Even by moments, of to-day?
      The eye wanders, faith is failing:
      Oh, loose hands, and let it be!
      Proudly, like a king bewailing,
    Oh, let fall one tear, and set us free!

      All true speech and large avowal
      Which the jealous soul concedes;
      All man’s heart which brooks bestowal,
      All frank faith which passion breeds,--
      These we had, and we gave truly;
      Doubt not, what we had, we gave!
      False we were not, nor unruly;
    Lodgers in the forest and the cave.

      Long we wandered with you, feeding
      Our rapt souls on your replies,
      In a wistful silence reading
      All the meaning of your eyes.
      By moss-bordered statues sitting,
      By well-heads, in summer days.
      But we turn, our eyes are flitting--
    See, the white east, and the morning-rays!

      And you too, O worshipped Graces,
      Sylvan gods of this fair shade!
      Is there doubt on divine faces?
      Are the blessed gods dismayed?
      Can men worship the wan features,
      The sunk eyes, the wailing tone,
      Of unsphered, discrownèd creatures,
    Souls as little godlike as their own?

      Come, loose hands! The wingèd fleetness
      Of immortal feet is gone;
      And your scents have shed their sweetness,
      And your flowers are overblown.
      And your jewelled gauds surrender
      Half their glories to the day;
      Freely did they flash their splendor,
    Freely gave it--but it dies away.

      In the pines, the thrush is waking;
      Lo, yon orient hill in flames!
      Scores of true-love-knots are breaking
      At divorce which it proclaims.
      When the lamps are paled at morning,
      Heart quits heart, and hand quits hand.
      Cold in that unlovely dawning,
      Loveless, rayless, joyless, you shall stand!

      Pluck no more red roses, maidens,
      Leave the lilies in their dew;
      Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens,
      Dusk, oh, dusk the hall with yew!
    --Shall I seek, that I may scorn her,
      Her I loved at eventide?
      Shall I ask, what faded mourner
    Stands, at daybreak, weeping by my side?...
        Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens!
            Dusk the hall with yew!

_THE VOICE._

              As the kindling glances,
                Queen-like and clear,
              Which the bright moon lances
                From her tranquil sphere
              At the sleepless waters
                Of a lonely mere,
    On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully,
                  Shiver and die;
              As the tears of sorrow
                Mothers have shed--
              Prayers that to-morrow
                Shall in vain be sped
              When the flower they flow for
                Lies frozen and dead--
    Fall on the throbbing brow, fall on the burning breast,
                  Bringing no rest;

              Like bright waves that fall
              With a lifelike motion
    On the lifeless margin of the sparkling ocean;
    A wild rose climbing up a mouldering wall;
    A gush of sunbeams through a ruined hall;
    Strains of glad music at a funeral,--
              So sad, and with so wild a start
              To this deep-sobered heart,
              So anxiously and painfully,
              So drearily and doubtfully,
    And, oh! with such intolerable change
              Of thought, such contrast strange,
    O unforgotten voice, thy accents come,
    Like wanderers from the world’s extremity,
              Unto their ancient home!

    In vain, all, all in vain,
    They beat upon mine ear again,--
    Those melancholy tones so sweet and still;
    Those lute-like tones which in the bygone year
              Did steal into mine ear;
    Blew such a thrilling summons to my will,
      Yet could not shake it;
    Made my tost heart its very life-blood spill,
      Yet could not break it.

_YOUTH’S AGITATIONS._

    When I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,
    From this poor present self which I am now;
    When youth has done its tedious vain expense
    Of passions that forever ebb and flow:

    Shall I not joy youth’s heats are left behind,
    And breathe more happy in an even clime?
    Ah, no! for then I shall begin to find
    A thousand virtues in this hated time!

    Then I shall wish its agitations back,
    And all its thwarting currents of desire;
    Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,
    And call this hurrying fever, generous fire;

    And sigh that one thing only has been lent
    To youth and age in common,--discontent.

_THE WORLD’S TRIUMPHS._

    So far as I conceive the world’s rebuke
    To him addressed who would recast her new,
    Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
    But from their weakness who would work her rue.

    “Behold,” she cries, “so many rages lulled,
    So many fiery spirits quite cooled down;
    Look how so many valors, long undulled,
    After short commerce with me, fear my frown!

    Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
    Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue!”--
    The world speaks well; yet might her foe reply,
    “Are wills so weak? then let not mine wait long!

    Hast thou so rare a poison? let me be
    Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me!”

_STAGIRIUS._[3]

        Thou, who dost dwell alone;
        Thou, who dost know thine own;
        Thou, to whom all are known
        From the cradle to the grave,--
            Save, oh! save.
        From the world’s temptations,
        From tribulations,
        From that fierce anguish
        Wherein we languish,
        From that torpor deep
        Wherein we lie asleep,
    Heavy as death, cold as the grave,
            Save, oh! save.

        When the soul, growing clearer,
          Sees God no nearer;
        When the soul, mounting higher,
          To God comes no nigher;
        But the arch-fiend Pride
        Mounts at her side,
        Foiling her high emprise,
        Sealing her eagle eyes,
        And, when she fain would soar,
        Makes idols to adore,
        Changing the pure emotion
        Of her high devotion,
        To a skin-deep sense
        Of her own eloquence;
    Strong to deceive, strong to enslave,--
            Save, oh! save.

        From the ingrained fashion
        Of this earthly nature
        That mars thy creature;
        From grief that is but passion,
        From mirth that is but feigning,
        From tears that bring no healing,
        From wild and weak complaining,
          Thine old strength revealing,
            Save, oh! save.
        From doubt, where all is double;
        Where wise men are not strong,
        Where comfort turns to trouble,
        Where just men suffer wrong;
        Where sorrow treads on joy,
        Where sweet things soonest cloy,
        Where faiths are built on dust,
        Where love is half mistrust,
    Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea,--
            Oh! set us free.
        Oh, let the false dream fly,
        Where our sick souls do lie
          Tossing continually!
            Oh, where thy voice doth come,
            Let all doubts be dumb,
            Let all words be mild,
            All strifes be reconciled,
            All pains beguiled!
            Light bring no blindness,
            Love no unkindness,
            Knowledge no ruin,
            Fear no undoing!
            From the cradle to the grave,
              Save, oh! save.

_HUMAN LIFE._

    What mortal, when he saw,
    Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
    Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly,--
    “I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law;
    The inly-written chart thou gavest me,
    To guide me, I have steered by to the end”?

    Ah! let us make no claim,
    On life’s incognizable sea,
    To too exact a steering of our way;
    Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
    If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
    Or some friend hailed us to keep company.

    Ay! we would each fain drive
    At random, and not steer by rule.
    Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain!
    Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive;
    We rush by coasts where we had lief remain:
    Man cannot, though he would, live chance’s fool.

    No! as the foaming swath
    Of torn-up water, on the main,
    Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
    On either side the black deep-furrowed path
    Cut by an onward-laboring vessel’s prore,
    And never touches the ship-side again;

    Even so we leave behind,
    As, chartered by some unknown Powers,
    We stem across the sea of life by night,
    The joys which were not for our use designed,--
    The friends to whom we had no natural right,
    The homes that were not destined to be ours.

_TO A GYPSY CHILD BY THE SEASHORE_;

DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN.

    Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes?
    Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?
    Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
    Who massed, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom?

    Lo! sails that gleam a moment, and are gone;
    The swinging waters, and the clustered pier.
    Not idly earth and ocean labor on,
    Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

    But thou, whom superfluity of joy
    Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
    Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy,
    Remaining in thy hunger and in thy pain;
    Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
    From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee;
    With eyes which sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
    And that soul-searching vision fell on me.

    Glooms that go deep as thine, I have not known;
    Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.
    Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own;
    Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.

    What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?
    His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,
    Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?
   --Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.

    Some exile’s, mindful how the past was glad?
    Some angel’s, in an alien planet born?
   --No exile’s dream was ever half so sad,
    Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn.

    Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh
    Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore;
    But in disdainful silence turn away,
    Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?

    Or do I wait, to hear some gray-haired king
    Unravel all his many-colored lore;
    Whose mind hath known all arts of governing,
    Mused much, loved life a little, loathed it more?

    Down the pale cheek, long lines of shadow slope,
    Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give.
   --Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,
    Foreseen thy harvest, yet proceed’st to live.

    O meek anticipant of that sure pain
    Whose sureness gray-haired scholars hardly learn!
    What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain?
    What heavens, what earth, what suns, shalt thou discern?

    Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star,
    Match that funereal aspect with her pall,
    I think thou wilt have fathomed life too far,
    Have known too much--or else forgotten all.

    The Guide of our dark steps, a triple veil
    Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps;
    Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale
    Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps.

    Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
    Not daily labor’s dull, Lethæan spring,
    Oblivion in lost angels can infuse
    Of the soiled glory, and the trailing wing;

    And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may,
    In the thronged fields where winning comes by strife;
    And though the just sun gild, as mortals pray,
    Some reaches of thy storm-vexed stream of life;

    Though that blank sunshine blind thee; though the cloud
    That severed the world’s march and thine, be gone;
    Though ease dulls grace, and wisdom be too proud
    To halve a lodging that was all her own,--

    Once, ere thy day go down, thou shalt discern,
    Oh, once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain!
    Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,
    And wear this majesty of grief again.

_A QUESTION._

TO FAUSTA.

    Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
            Like the wave;
    Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
        Love lends life a little grace,
        A few sad smiles; and then
        Both are laid in one cold place,--
            In the grave.

    Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die
            Like spring flowers;
    Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
        Men dig graves with bitter tears
        For their dead hopes; and all,
        Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,
            Count the hours.

    We count the hours! These dreams of ours,
            False and hollow,
    Do we go hence, and find they are not dead?
        Joys we dimly apprehend
        Faces that smiled and fled,
        Hopes born here, and born to end,
            Shall we follow?

_IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS._

    If, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
        At first imagined lay
    The sacred world; and by procession sure
    From those still deeps, in form and color drest,
    Seasons alternating, and night and day,
    The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west,
        Took then its all-seen way;

    Oh, waking on a world which thus-wise springs!
        Whether it needs thee count
    Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things
    Ages or hours--oh, waking on life’s stream!
    By lonely pureness to the all-pure fount
    (Only by this thou canst) the colored dream
        Of life remount!

    Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow,
        And faint the city gleams;
    Rare the lone pastoral huts--marvel not thou!
    The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,--
    But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;
    Alone the sun arises, and alone
        Spring the great streams.

    But, if the wild unfathered mass no birth
        In divine seats hath known;
    In the blank, echoing solitude, if Earth,
    Rocking her obscure body to and fro,
    Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,
    Unfruitful oft, and at her happiest throe
        Forms, what she forms, alone;

    Oh, seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bathed head
        Piercing the solemn cloud
    Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread!
    O man, whom Earth, thy long-vexed mother, bare
    Not without joy,--so radiant, so endowed
    (Such happy issue crowned her painful care),--
        Be not too proud!

    Oh, when most self-exalted most alone,
        Chief dreamer, own thy dream!
    Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown;
    Who hath a monarch’s hath no brother’s part--
    Yet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem.
    Oh, what a spasm shakes the dreamer’s heart!
          “_I, too, but seem._”

_THE WORLD AND THE QUIETIST._

TO CRITIAS.

        “Why, when the world’s great mind
        Hath finally inclined,
    Why,” you say, Critias, “be debating still?
        Why, with these mournful rhymes
        Learned in more languid climes,
        Blame our activity
        Who, with such passionate will,
        Are what we mean to be?”

        Critias, long since, I know
        (For Fate decreed it so),
    Long since the world hath set its heart to live;
        Long since, with credulous zeal
        It turns life’s mighty wheel,
        Still doth for laborers send
        Who still their labor give,
        And still expects an end.

        Yet, as the wheel flies round,
        With no ungrateful sound
    Do adverse voices fall on the world’s ear.
        Deafened by his own stir,
        The rugged laborer
        Caught not till then a sense
        So glowing and so near
          Of his omnipotence.

        So, when the feast grew loud
        In Susa’s palace proud,
    A white-robed slave stole to the great king’s side.
        He spake--the great king heard;
        Felt the slow-rolling word
        Swell his attentive soul;
        Breathed deeply as it died,
          And drained his mighty bowl.

_THE SECOND BEST._

    Moderate tasks and moderate leisure,
    Quiet living, strict-kept measure
    Both in suffering and in pleasure,--
      ’Tis for this thy nature yearns.

    But so many books thou readest,
    But so many schemes thou breedest,
    But so many wishes feedest,
      That thy poor head almost turns.

    And (the world’s so madly jangled,
    Human things so fast entangled)
    Nature’s wish must now be strangled
      For that best which she discerns.

    So it _must_ be! yet, while leading
    A strained life, while over-feeding,
    Like the rest, his wit with reading,
      No small profit that man earns,--

    Who through all he meets can steer him,
    Can reject what cannot clear him,
    Cling to what can truly cheer him;
      Who each day more surely learns

    That an impulse, from the distance
    Of his deepest, best existence,
    To the words, “Hope, Light, Persistence,”
      Strongly sets and truly burns.

_CONSOLATION._

    Mist clogs the sunshine.
    Smoky dwarf houses
    Hem me round everywhere;
    A vague dejection
    Weighs down my soul.

    Yet, while I languish,
    Everywhere countless
    Prospects unroll themselves,
    And countless beings
    Pass countless moods.

    Far hence, in Asia,
    On the smooth convent-roofs,
    On the gold terraces,
    Of holy Lassa,
    Bright shines the sun.

    Gray time-worn marbles
    Hold the pure Muses;
    In their cool gallery,
    By yellow Tiber,
    They still look fair.

    Strange unloved uproar[A]
    Shrills round their portal;
    Yet not on Helicon
    Kept they more cloudless
    Their noble calm.

    Through sun-proof alleys
    In a lone, sand-hemmed
    City of Africa,
    A blind, led beggar,
    Age-bowed, asks alms.

    No bolder robber
    Erst abode ambushed
    Deep in the sandy waste;
    No clearer eyesight
    Spied prey afar.

    Saharan sand-winds
    Seared his keen eyeballs;
    Spent is the spoil he won.
    For him the present
    Holds only pain.

    Two young, fair lovers,
    Where the warm June-wind,
    Fresh from the summer fields
    Plays fondly round them,
    Stand, tranced in joy.

    With sweet, joined voices,
    And with eyes brimming,
    “Ah!” they cry, “Destiny,
    Prolong the present!
    Time, stand still here!”

    The prompt stern goddess
    Shakes her head, frowning:
    Time gives his hour-glass
    Its due reversal;
    Their hour is gone.

    With weak indulgence
    Did the just goddess
    Lengthen their happiness,
    She lengthened also
    Distress elsewhere.

    The hour whose happy
    Unalloyed moments
    I would eternalize,
    Ten thousand mourners
    Well pleased see end.

    The bleak, stern hour,
    Whose severe moments
    I would annihilate,
    Is passed by others
    In warmth, light, joy.

    Time, so complained of,
    Who to no one man
    Shows partiality,
    Brings round to all men
    Some undimmed hours.

 [A] Written during the siege of Rome by the French, 1849.

_RESIGNATION._

TO FAUSTA.

    _To die be given us, or attain!
    Fierce work it were, to do again._

    So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, prayed
    At burning noon; so warriors said,
    Scarfed with the cross, who watched the miles
    Of dust which wreathed their struggling files
    Down Lydian mountains; so, when snows
    Round Alpine summits, eddying, rose,
    The Goth, bound Rome-wards; so the Hun,
    Crouched on his saddle, while the sun
    Went lurid down o’er flooded plains
    Through which the groaning Danube strains
    To the drear Euxine: so pray all,
    Whom labors, self-ordained, inthrall;
    Because they to themselves propose
    On this side the all-common close
    A goal which, gained, may give repose.
    So pray they; and to stand again
    Where they stood once, to them were pain;
    Pain to thread back and to renew
    Past straits, and currents long steered through.

    But milder natures, and more free,--
    Whom an unblamed serenity
    Hath freed from passions, and the state
    Of struggle these necessitate;
    Whom schooling of the stubborn mind
    Hath made, or birth hath found, resigned,--
    These mourn not, that their goings pay
    Obedience to the passing day.
    These claim not every laughing hour
    For handmaid to their striding power;
    Each in her turn, with torch upreared,
    To await their march; and when appeared,
    Through the cold gloom, with measured race,
    To usher for a destined space
    (Her own sweet errands all foregone)
    The too imperious traveller on.
    These, Fausta, ask not this; nor thou,
    Time’s chafing prisoner, ask it now!

    We left just ten years since, you say,
    That wayside inn we left to-day.[4]
    Our jovial host, as forth we fare,
    Shouts greeting from his easy-chair.
    High on a bank our leader stands,
    Reviews and ranks his motley bands,
    Makes clear our goal to every eye,--
    The valley’s western boundary.
    A gate swings to! our tide hath flowed
    Already from the silent road.
    The valley-pastures, one by one,
    Are threaded, quiet in the sun;
    And now, beyond the rude stone bridge,
    Slopes gracious up the western ridge.
    Its woody border, and the last
    Of its dark upland farms, is past;
    Cool farms, with open-lying stores,
    Under their burnished sycamores,--
    All past! and through the trees we glide
    Emerging on the green hillside.
    There climbing hangs, a far-seen sign,
    Our wavering, many-colored line;
    There winds, up-streaming slowly still
    Over the summit of the hill.
    And now, in front, behold outspread
    Those upper regions we must tread,--
    Mild hollows, and clear heathy swells,
    The cheerful silence of the fells.

    Some two hours’ march, with serious air,
    Through the deep noontide heats we fare;
    The red-grouse, springing at our sound,
    Skims, now and then, the shining ground;
    No life, save his and ours, intrudes
    Upon these breathless solitudes.
    Oh, joy! again the farms appear.
    Cool shade is there, and rustic cheer;
    There springs the brook will guide us down,
    Bright comrade, to the noisy town.
    Lingering, we follow down; we gain
    The town, the highway, and the plain.
    And many a mile of dusty way,
    Parched and road-worn, we made that day;
    But, Fausta, I remember well,
    That as the balmy darkness fell,
    We bathed our hands with speechless glee,
    That night, in the wide-glimmering sea.

    Once more we tread this self-same road,
    Fausta, which ten years since we trod;
    Alone we tread it, you and I,
    Ghosts of that boisterous company.
    Here, where the brook shines, near its head,
    In its clear, shallow, turf-fringed bed;
    Here, whence the eye first sees, far down,
    Capped with faint smoke, the noisy town,--
    Here sit we, and again unroll,
    Though slowly, the familiar whole.
    The solemn wastes of heathy hill
    Sleep in the July sunshine still;
    The self-same shadows now, as then,
    Play through this grassy upland glen;
    The loose dark stones on the green way
    Lie strewn, it seems, where then they lay;
    On this mild bank above the stream,
    (You crush them!) the blue gentians gleam.
    Still this wild brook, the rushes cool,
    The sailing foam, the shining pool!
    These are not changed; and we, you say,
    Are scarce more changed, in truth, than they.

    The gypsies, whom we met below,
    They too have long roamed to and fro;
    They ramble, leaving, where they pass,
    Their fragments on the cumbered grass.
    And often to some kindly place
    Chance guides the migratory race,
    Where, though long wanderings intervene,
    They recognize a former scene.
    The dingy tents are pitched; the fires
    Give to the wind their wavering spires;
    In dark knots crouch round the wild flame
    Their children, as when first they came;
    They see their shackled beasts again
    Move, browsing, up the gray-walled lane.
    Signs are not wanting, which might raise
    The ghost in them of former days,--
    Signs are not wanting, if they would;
    Suggestions to disquietude.
    For them, for all, time’s busy touch,
    While it mends little, troubles much.
    Their joints grow stiffer--but the year
    Runs his old round of dubious cheer;
    Chilly they grow--yet winds in March,
    Still, sharp as ever, freeze and parch;
    They must live still--and yet, God knows,
    Crowded and keen the country grows;
    It seems as if, in their decay,
    The law grew stronger every day.
    So might they reason, so compare,
    Fausta, times past with times that are;
    But no! they rubbed through yesterday
    In their hereditary way,
    And they will rub through, if they can,
    To-morrow on the self-same plan,
    Till death arrive to supersede,
    For them, vicissitude and need.

    The poet, to whose mighty heart
    Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
    Subdues that energy to scan
    Not his own course, but that of man.
    Though he move mountains, though his day
    Be passed on the proud heights of sway,
    Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
    Though he hath borne immortal pains,
    Action and suffering though he know,--
    He hath not lived, if he lives so.
    He sees, in some great-historied land,
    A ruler of the people stand,
    Sees his strong thought in fiery flood
    Roll through the heaving multitude,
    Exults--yet for no moment’s space
    Envies the all-regarded place.
    Beautiful eyes meet his, and he
    Bears to admire uncravingly;
    They pass: he, mingled with the crowd,
    Is in their far-off triumphs proud.

    From some high station he looks down,
    At sunset, on a populous town;
    Surveys each happy group which fleets,
    Toil ended, through the shining streets,--
    Each with some errand of its own,--
    And does not say, _I am alone_.
    He sees the gentle stir of birth
    When morning purifies the earth;
    He leans upon a gate, and sees
    The pastures, and the quiet trees.
    Low, woody hill, with gracious bound,
    Folds the still valley almost round;
    The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn,
    Is answered from the depth of dawn;
    In the hedge straggling to the stream,
    Pale, dew-drenched, half-shut roses gleam.
    But, where the farther side slopes down,
    He sees the drowsy new-waked clown
    In his white quaint-embroidered frock
    Make, whistling, toward his mist-wreathed flock,
    Slowly, behind his heavy tread,
    The wet, flowered grass heaves up its head.
    Leaned on his gate, he gazes: tears
    Are in his eyes, and in his ears
    The murmur of a thousand years.
    Before him he sees life unroll,
    A placid and continuous whole,--
    That general life, which does not cease,
    Whose secret is not joy, but peace;
    That life, whose dumb wish is not missed
    If birth proceeds, if things subsist;
    The life of plants, and stones, and rain,
    The life he craves--if not in vain
    Fate gave, what chance shall not control,
    His sad lucidity of soul.

    You listen; but that wandering smile,
    Fausta, betrays you cold the while!
    Your eyes pursue the bells of foam
    Washed, eddying, from this bank, their home.
    _Those gypsies_--so your thoughts I scan--
    _Are less, the poet more, than man_.
    _They feel not, though they move and see._
    _Deeper the poet feels; but he_
    _Breathes, when he will, immortal air,_
    _Where Orpheus and where Homer are._
    _In the day’s life, whose iron round_
    _Hems us all in, he is not bound;_
    _He leaves his kind, o’erleaps their pen,_
    _And flees the common life of men._
    _He escapes thence, but we abide._
   _ Not deep the poet sees, but wide._

    The world in which we live and move
    Outlasts aversion, outlasts love,
    Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,
    Remorse, grief, joy; and, were the scope
    Of these affections wider made,
    Man still would see, and see dismayed,
    Beyond his passion’s widest range,
    Far regions of eternal change.
    Nay, and since death, which wipes out man,
    Finds him with many an unsolved plan,
    With much unknown, and much untried,
    Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried,
    Still gazing on the ever full
    Eternal mundane spectacle,--
    This world in which we draw our breath,
    In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.

      Blame thou not, therefore, him who dares
    Judge vain beforehand human cares;
    Whose natural insight can discern
    What through experience others learn;
    Who needs not love and power, to know
    Love transient, power an unreal show;
    Who treads at ease life’s uncheered ways:
    Him blame not, Fausta, rather praise!
    Rather thyself for some aim pray,
    Nobler than this, to fill the day;
    Rather that heart, which burns in thee,
    Ask, not to amuse, but to set free;
    Be passionate hopes not ill resigned
    For quiet, and a fearless mind.
    And though fate grudge to thee and me
    The poet’s rapt security,
    Yet they, believe me, who await
    No gifts from chance, have conquered fate.
    They, winning room to see and hear,
    And to men’s business not too near,
    Through clouds of individual strife
    Draw homeward to the general life.
    Like leaves by suns not yet uncurled;
    To the wise, foolish; to the world,
    Weak: yet not weak, I might reply,
    Not foolish, Fausta, in His eye,
    To whom each moment in its race,
    Crowd as we will its neutral space,
    Is but a quiet watershed
    Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed.

    Enough, we live! and if a life
    With large results so little rife,
    Though bearable, seem hardly worth
    This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;
    Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
    The solemn hills around us spread,
    This stream which falls incessantly,
    The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,
    If I might lend their life a voice,
    Seem to bear rather than rejoice.
    And even could the intemperate prayer
    Man iterates, while these forbear,
    For movement, for an ampler sphere,
    Pierce Fate’s impenetrable ear;
    Not milder is the general lot
    Because our spirits have forgot,
    In action’s dizzying eddy whirled,
    The something that infects the world.

NARRATIVE POEMS.

_SOHRAB AND RUSTUM._[5]

AN EPISODE.

    And the first gray of morning filled the east,
    And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream.
    But all the Tartar camp along the stream
    Was hushed, and still the men were plunged in sleep.
    Sohrab alone, he slept not; all night long
    He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed:
    But when the gray dawn stole into his tent,
    He rose, and clad himself, and girt his sword,
    And took his horseman’s cloak, and left his tent,
    And went abroad into the cold wet fog,
    Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa’s tent.
      Through the black Tartar tents he passed, which stood
    Clustering like bee-hives on the low flat strand
    Of Oxus, where the summer-floods o’erflow
    When the sun melts the snows in high Pamere;
    Through the black tents he passed, o’er that low strand,
    And to a hillock came, a little back
    From the stream’s brink,--the spot where first a boat,
    Crossing the stream in summer, scrapes the land.
    The men of former times had crowned the top
    With a clay fort; but that was fallen, and now
    The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa’s tent,
    A dome of laths, and o’er it felts were spread.
    And Sohrab came there, and went in, and stood
    Upon the thick piled carpets in the tent,
    And found the old man sleeping on his bed
    Of rugs and felts, and near him lay his arms.
    And Peran-Wisa heard him, though the step
    Was dulled; for he slept light, an old man’s sleep;
    And he rose quickly on one arm, and said,--
      “Who art thou? for it is not yet clear dawn.
    Speak! is there news, or any night alarm?”
      But Sohrab came to the bedside, and said,--
    “Thou know’st me, Peran-Wisa! it is I.
    The sun has not yet risen, and the foe
    Sleep: but I sleep not; all night long I lie
    Tossing and wakeful, and I come to thee.
    For so did King Afrasiab bid me seek
    Thy counsel, and to heed thee as thy son,
    In Samarcand, before the army marched;
    And I will tell thee what my heart desires.
    Thou know’st if, since from Ader-baijan first
    I came among the Tartars, and bore arms,
    I have still served Afrasiab well, and shown,
    At my boy’s years, the courage of a man.
    This too thou know’st, that while I still bear on
    The conquering Tartar ensigns through the world,
    And beat the Persians back on every field,
    I seek one man, one man, and one alone,--
    Rustum, my father; who I hoped should greet,
    Should one day greet, upon some well-fought field,
    His not unworthy, not inglorious son.
    So I long hoped, but him I never find.
    Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask.
    Let the two armies rest to-day; but I
    Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords
    To meet me, man to man: if I prevail,
    Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall--
    Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin.
    Dim is the rumor of a common fight,
    Where host meets host, and many names are sunk;
    But of a single combat fame speaks clear.”
      He spoke; and Peran-Wisa took the hand
    Of the young man in his, and sighed, and said,--
      “O Sohrab, an unquiet heart is thine!
    Canst thou not rest among the Tartar chiefs,
    And share the battle’s common chance with us
    Who love thee, but must press forever first,
    In single fight incurring single risk,
    To find a father thou hast never seen?
    That were far best, my son, to stay with us
    Unmurmuring; in our tents, while it is war,
    And when ’tis truce, then in Afrasiab’s towns.
    But if this one desire indeed rules all,
    To seek out Rustum--seek him not through fight!
    Seek him in peace, and carry to his arms,
    O Sohrab, carry an unwounded son!
    But far hence seek him, for he is not here.
    For now it is not as when I was young,
    When Rustum was in front of every fray:
    But now he keeps apart, and sits at home,
    In Seistan, with Zal, his father old;
    Whether that his own mighty strength at last
    Feels the abhorred approaches of old age;
    Or in some quarrel with the Persian king.
    There go!--Thou wilt not? Yet my heart forebodes
    Danger or death awaits thee on this field.
    Fain would I know thee safe and well, though lost
    To us; fain therefore send thee hence in peace
    To seek thy father, not seek single fights
    In vain. But who can keep the lion’s cub
    From ravening, and who govern Rustum’s son?
    Go, I will grant thee what thy heart desires.”
      So said he, and dropped Sohrab’s hand, and left
    His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he lay;
    And o’er his chilly limbs his woollen coat
    He passed, and tied his sandals on his feet,
    And threw a white cloak round him, and he took
    In his right hand a ruler’s staff, no sword;
    And on his head he set his sheep-skin cap,
    Black, glossy, curled, the fleece of Kara-Kul;
    And raised the curtain of his tent, and called
    His herald to his side, and went abroad.
      The sun by this had risen, and cleared the fog
    From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands.
    And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed
    Into the open plain: so Haman bade,--
    Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled
    The host, and still was in his lusty prime.
    From their black tents, long files of horse, they streamed;
    As when some gray November morn the files,
    In marching order spread, of long-necked cranes
    Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes
    Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,
    Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound
    For the warm Persian seaboard,--so they streamed.
    The Tartars of the Oxus, the king’s guard,
    First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears;
    Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come
    And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
    Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,
    The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
    And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
    Light men and on light steeds, who only drink
    The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
    And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came
    From far, and a more doubtful service owned,--
    The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
    Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards
    And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
    Who roam o’er Kipchak and the northern waste,
    Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray
    Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes,
    Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere,--
    These all filed out from camp into the plain.
    And on the other side the Persians formed,--
    First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seemed,
    The Ilyats of Khorassan; and behind,
    The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot,
    Marshalled battalions bright in burnished steel.
    But Peran-Wisa with his herald came,
    Threading the Tartar squadrons to the front,
    And with his staff kept back the foremost ranks.
    And when Ferood, who led the Persians, saw
    That Peran-Wisa kept the Tartars back,
    He took his spear, and to the front he came,
    And checked his ranks, and fixed them where they stood.
    And the old Tartar came upon the sand
    Betwixt the silent hosts, and spake, and said,--
      “Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!
    Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.
    But choose a champion from the Persian lords
    To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man.”
      As in the country, on a morn in June,
    When the dew glistens on the pearled ears,
    A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy,--
    So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa said,
    A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons ran
    Of pride and hope for Sohrab, whom they loved.
      But as a troop of pedlers from Cabool
    Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,
    That vast sky-neighboring mountain of milk snow;
    Crossing so high, that, as they mount, they pass
    Long flocks of travelling birds dead on the snow,
    Choked by the air, and scarce can they themselves
    Slake their parched throats with sugared mulberries;
    In single file they move, and stop their breath,
    For fear they should dislodge the o’erhanging snows,--
    So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.
      And to Ferood his brother chiefs came up
    To counsel; Gudurz and Zoarrah came,
    And Feraburz, who ruled the Persian host
    Second, and was the uncle of the king;
    These came and counselled, and then Gudurz said,--
      “Ferood, shame bids us take their challenge up,
    Yet champion have we none to match this youth.
    He has the wild stag’s foot, the lion’s heart.
    But Rustum came last night; aloof he sits
    And sullen, and has pitched his tents apart.
    Him will I seek, and carry to his ear
    The Tartar challenge, and this young man’s name;
    Haply he will forget his wrath, and fight.
    Stand forth the while, and take their challenge up.”
      So spake he; and Ferood stood forth and cried,--
    “Old man, be it agreed as thou hast said!
    Let Sohrab arm, and we will find a man.”
      He spake; and Peran-Wisa turned, and strode
    Back through the opening squadrons to his tent.
    But through the anxious Persians Gudurz ran,
    And crossed the camp which lay behind, and reached,
    Out on the sands beyond it, Rustum’s tents.
    Of scarlet cloth they were, and glittering gay,
    Just pitched; the high pavilion in the midst
    Was Rustum’s, and his men lay camped around.
    And Gudurz entered Rustum’s tent, and found
    Rustum; his morning meal was done, but still
    The table stood before him, charged with food,--
    A side of roasted sheep, and cakes of bread,
    And dark-green melons; and there Rustum sate
    Listless, and held a falcon on his wrist,
    And played with it; but Gudurz came and stood
    Before him; and he looked, and saw him stand,
    And with a cry sprang up, and dropped the bird,
    And greeted Gudurz with both hands, and said,--
      “Welcome! these eyes could see no better sight.
    What news? but sit down first, and eat and drink.”
      But Gudurz stood in the tent-door, and said,--
    “Not now. A time will come to eat and drink,
    But not to-day: to-day has other needs.
    The armies are drawn out, and stand at gaze;
    For, from the Tartars is a challenge brought
    To pick a champion from the Persian lords
    To fight their champion--and thou know’st his name:
    Sohrab men call him, but his birth is hid.
    O Rustum, like thy might is this young man’s!
    He has the wild stag’s foot, the lion’s heart;
    And he is young, and Iran’s chiefs are old,
    Or else too weak; and all eyes turn to thee.
    Come down and help us, Rustum, or we lose!”
      He spoke; but Rustum answered with a smile,--
    “Go to! if Iran’s chiefs are old, then I
    Am older. If the young are weak, the king
    Errs strangely; for the king, for Kai Khosroo,
    Himself is young, and honors younger men,
    And lets the aged moulder to their graves.
    Rustum he loves no more, but loves the young:
    The young may rise at Sohrab’s vaunts, not I.
    For what care I, though all speak Sohrab’s fame?
    For would that I myself had such a son,
    And not that one slight helpless girl I have!--
    A son so famed, so brave, to send to war,
    And I to tarry with the snow-haired Zal,
    My father, whom the robber Afghans vex,
    And clip his borders short, and drive his herds,
    And he has none to guard his weak old age.
    There would I go, and hang my armor up,
    And with my great name fence that weak old man,
    And spend the goodly treasures I have got,
    And rest my age, and hear of Sohrab’s fame,
    And leave to death the hosts of thankless kings,
    And with these slaughterous hands draw sword no more.”
      He spoke, and smiled; and Gudurz made reply,--
    “What then, O Rustum, will men say to this,
    When Sohrab dares our bravest forth, and seeks
    Thee most of all, and thou, whom most he seeks,
    Hidest thy face? Take heed lest men should say,--
    _Like some old miser, Rustum hoards his fame,_
    _And shuns to peril it with younger men_.”
      And, greatly moved, then Rustum made reply,--
    “O Gudurz, wherefore dost thou say such words?
    Thou knowest better words than this to say.
    What is one more, one less, obscure or famed,
    Valiant or craven, young or old, to me?
    Are not they mortal? am not I myself?
    But who for men of naught would do great deeds?
    Come, thou shalt see how Rustum hoards his fame!
    But I will fight unknown, and in plain arms:
    Let not men say of Rustum, he was matched
    In single fight with any mortal man.”
      He spoke, and frowned; and Gudurz turned, and ran
    Back quickly through the camp in fear and joy,--
    Fear at his wrath, but joy that Rustum came.
    But Rustum strode to his tent-door, and called
    His followers in, and bade them bring his arms,
    And clad himself in steel. The arms he chose
    Were plain, and on his shield was no device;
    Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold,
    And, from the fluted spine a-top, a plume
    Of horse-hair waved, a scarlet horse-hair plume.
    So armed, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his horse,
    Followed him like a faithful hound at heel,--
    Ruksh, whose renown was noised through all the earth,
    The horse whom Rustum on a foray once
    Did in Bokhara by the river find
    A colt beneath its dam, and drove him home,
    And reared him; a bright bay, with lofty crest,
    Dight with a saddle-cloth of broidered green
    Crusted with gold, and on the ground were worked
    All beasts of chase, all beasts which hunters know.
    So followed, Rustum left his tents, and crossed
    The camp, and to the Persian host appeared.
    And all the Persians knew him, and with shouts
    Hailed; but the Tartars knew not who he was.
    And dear as the wet diver to the eyes
    Of his pale wife who waits and weeps on shore,
    By sandy Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf,
    Plunging all day in the blue waves, at night,
    Having made up his tale of precious pearls,
    Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands,--
    So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came.
      And Rustum to the Persian front advanced;
    And Sohrab armed in Haman’s tent, and came.
    And as a-field the reapers cut a swath
    Down through the middle of a rich man’s corn,
    And on each side are squares of standing corn,
    And in the midst a stubble short and bare,--
    So on each side were squares of men, with spears
    Bristling, and in the midst the open sand.
    And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast
    His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw
    Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came.
      As some rich woman, on a winter’s morn,
    Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge
    Who with numb blackened fingers makes her fire,--
    At cock-crow, on a starlit winter’s morn,
    When the frost flowers the whitened window-panes,--
    And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts
    Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed
    The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar
    Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
    All the most valiant chiefs; long he perused
    His spirited air, and wondered who he was.
    For very young he seemed, tenderly reared;
    Like some young cypress, tall and dark and straight,
    Which in a queen’s secluded garden throws
    Its slight dark shadow on the moonlit turf,
    By midnight, to a bubbling fountain’s sound,--
    So slender Sohrab seemed, so softly reared.
    And a deep pity entered Rustum’s soul
    As he beheld him coming; and he stood,
    And beckoned to him with his hand, and said,--
      “O thou young man, the air of heaven is soft,
    And warm, and pleasant; but the grave is cold!
    Heaven’s air is better than the cold dead grave.
    Behold me! I am vast, and clad in iron,
    And tried; and I have stood on many a field
    Of blood, and I have fought with many a foe:
    Never was that field lost, or that foe saved.
    O Sohrab, wherefore wilt thou rush on death?
    Be governed: quit the Tartar host, and come
    To Iran, and be as my son to me,
    And fight beneath my banner till I die!
    There are no youths in Iran brave as thou.”
      So he spake, mildly. Sohrab heard his voice,
    The mighty voice of Rustum, and he saw
    His giant figure planted on the sand,
    Sole, like some single tower, which a chief
    Hath builded on the waste in former years
    Against the robbers; and he saw that head,
    Streaked with its first gray hairs; hope filled his soul,
    And he ran forward, and embraced his knees,
    And clasped his hand within his own, and said,--
      “Oh, by thy father’s head! by thine own soul!
    Art thou not Rustum? Speak! art thou not he?”
      But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth,
    And turned away, and spake to his own soul,--
      “Ah me! I muse what this young fox may mean!
    False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys.
    For if I now confess this thing he asks,
    And hide it not, but say, _Rustum is here!_
    He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes;
    But he will find some pretext not to fight,
    And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts,
    A belt or sword perhaps, and go his way.
    And on a feast-tide, in Afrasiab’s hall
    In Samarcand, he will arise and cry,--
      ‘I challenged once, when the two armies camped
    Beside the Oxus, all the Persian lords
    To cope with me in single fight; but they
    Shrank, only Rustum dared; then he and I
    Changed gifts, and went on equal terms away.’
    So will he speak, perhaps, while men applaud;
    Then were the chiefs of Iran shamed through me.”
      And then he turned, and sternly spake aloud,--
    “Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus
    Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast called
    By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, or yield!
    Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight?
    Rash boy, men look on Rustum’s face, and flee!
    For well I know, that did great Rustum stand
    Before thy face this day, and were revealed,
    There would be then no talk of fighting more.
    But being what I am, I tell thee this,--
    Do thou record it in thine inmost soul:
    Either thou shalt renounce thy vaunt, and yield,
    Or else thy bones shall strew this sand, till winds
    Bleach them, or Oxus with his summer-floods,
    Oxus in summer wash them all away.”
      He spoke; and Sohrab answered, on his feet,--
    “Art thou so fierce? Thou wilt not fight me so!
    I am no girl, to be made pale by words.
    Yet this thou hast said well, did Rustum stand
    Here on this field, there were no fighting then.
    But Rustum is far hence, and we stand here.
    Begin! thou art more vast, more dread than I;
    And thou art proved, I know, and I am young--
    But yet success sways with the breath of Heaven.
    And though thou thinkest that thou knowest sure
    Thy victory, yet thou canst not surely know.
    For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,
    Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate,
    Which hangs uncertain to which side to fall;
    And whether it will heave us up to land,
    Or whether it will roll us out to sea,--
    Back out to sea, to the deep waves of death,--
    We know not, and no search will make us know:
    Only the event will teach us in its hour.”
      He spoke; and Rustum answered not, but hurled
    His spear: down from the shoulder, down it came,
    As on some partridge in the corn a hawk,
    That long has towered in the airy clouds,
    Drops like a plummet; Sohrab saw it come,
    And sprang aside, quick as a flash; the spear
    Hissed, and went quivering down into the sand,
    Which it sent flying wide. Then Sohrab threw
    In turn, and full struck Rustum’s shield; sharp rang,
    The iron plates rang sharp, but turned the spear.
    And Rustum seized his club, which none but he
    Could wield; an unlopped trunk it was, and huge,
    Still rough,--like those which men in treeless plains
    To build them boats fish from the flooded rivers,
    Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up
    By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time
    Hath made in Himalayan forests wrack,
    And strewn the channels with torn boughs,--so huge
    The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck
    One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside,
    Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came
    Thundering to earth, and leapt from Rustum’s hand.
    And Rustum followed his own blow, and fell
    To his knees, and with his fingers clutched the sand.
    And now might Sohrab have unsheathed his sword,
    And pierced the mighty Rustum while he lay
    Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with sand;
    But he looked on, and smiled, nor bared his sword,
    But courteously drew back, and spoke, and said,--
      “Thou strik’st too hard! that club of thine will float
    Upon the summer-floods, and not my bones.
    But rise, and be not wroth! not wroth am I;
    No, when I see thee, wrath forsakes my soul.
    Thou say’st thou art not Rustum; be it so!
    Who art thou, then, that canst so touch my soul?
    Boy as I am, I have seen battles too,--
    Have waded foremost in their bloody waves,
    And heard their hollow roar of dying men;
    But never was my heart thus touched before.
    Are they from Heaven, these softenings of the heart?
    O thou old warrior, let us yield to Heaven!
    Come, plant we here in earth our angry spears,
    And make a truce, and sit upon this sand,
    And pledge each other in red wine, like friends,
    And thou shalt talk to me of Rustum’s deeds.
    There are enough foes in the Persian host,
    Whom I may meet, and strike, and feel no pang;
    Champions enough Afrasiab has, whom thou
    Mayst fight; fight _them_, when they confront thy spear!
    But oh, let there be peace ’twixt thee and me!”
      He ceased; but while he spake, Rustum had risen,
    And stood erect, trembling with rage; his club
    He left to lie, but had regained his spear,
    Whose fiery point now in his mailed right hand
    Blazed bright and baleful, like that autumn-star,
    The baleful sign of fevers; dust had soiled
    His stately crest, and dimmed his glittering arms.
    His breast heaved, his lips foamed, and twice his voice
    Was choked with rage; at last these words broke way:--
      “Girl! nimble with thy feet, not with thy hands!
    Curled minion, dancer, coiner of sweet words!
    Fight, let me hear thy hateful voice no more!
    Thou art not in Afrasiab’s gardens now
    With Tartar girls, with whom thou art wont to dance;
    But on the Oxus-sands, and in the dance
    Of battle, and with me, who make no play
    Of war: I fight it out, and hand to hand.
    Speak not to me of truce, and pledge, and wine!
    Remember all thy valor; try thy feints
    And cunning! all the pity I had is gone,
    Because thou hast shamed me before both the hosts
    With thy light skipping tricks and thy girl’s wiles.”
      He spoke; and Sohrab kindled at his taunts,
    And he too drew his sword; at once they rushed
    Together, as two eagles on one prey
    Come rushing down together from the clouds,
    One from the east, one from the west; their shields
    Dashed with a clang together, and a din
    Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters
    Make often in the forest’s heart at morn,
    Of hewing axes, crashing trees,--such blows
    Rustum and Sohrab on each other hailed.
    And you would say that sun and stars took part
    In that unnatural conflict: for a cloud
    Grew suddenly in heaven, and darked the sun
    Over the fighters’ heads; and a wind rose
    Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain,
    And in a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair.
    In gloom they twain were wrapped, and they alone;
    For both the on-looking hosts on either hand
    Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure,
    And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream.
    But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes
    And laboring breath. First Rustum struck the shield
    Which Sohrab held stiff out; the steel-spiked spear
    Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin,
    And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan.
    Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum’s helm,
    Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest
    He shore away, and that proud horse-hair plume,
    Never till now defiled, sank to the dust;
    And Rustum bowed his head. But then the gloom
    Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air,
    And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh the horse,
    Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry:
    No horse’s cry was that, most like the roar
    Of some pained desert-lion, who all day
    Has trailed the hunter’s javelin in his side,
    And comes at night to die upon the sand;
    The two hosts heard that cry, and quaked for fear,
    And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream.
    But Sohrab heard, and quailed not, but rushed on,
    And struck again; and again Rustum bowed
    His head; but this time all the blade, like glass,
    Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm,
    And in the hand the hilt remained alone.
    Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes
    Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear,
    And shouted, _Rustum_! Sohrab heard that shout,
    And shrank amazed: back he recoiled one step,
    And scanned with blinking eyes the advancing form;
    And then he stood bewildered, and he dropped
    His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side.
    He reeled, and staggering back sank to the ground.
    And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell,
    And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all
    The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair,--
    Saw Rustum standing safe upon his feet,
    And Sohrab wounded on the bloody sand.
      Then, with a bitter smile, Rustum began,--
    “Sohrab, thou thoughtest in thy mind to kill
    A Persian lord this day, and strip his corpse,
    And bear thy trophies to Afrasiab’s tent;
    Or else that the great Rustum would come down
    Himself to fight, and that thy wiles would move
    His heart to take a gift, and let thee go.
    And then that all the Tartar host would praise
    Thy courage or thy craft, and spread thy fame,
    To glad thy father in his weak old age.
    Fool, thou art slain, and by an unknown man!
    Dearer to the red jackals shalt thou be
    Than to thy friends, and to thy father old.”
      And, with a fearless mien, Sohrab replied,--
    “Unknown thou art, yet thy fierce vaunt is vain.
    Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man!
    No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart.
    For, were I matched with ten such men as thee,
    And I were that which till to-day I was,
    They should be lying here, I standing there.
    But that belovèd name unnerved my arm,--
    That name, and something, I confess, in thee,
    Which troubles all my heart, and made my shield
    Fall; and thy spear transfixed an unarmed foe.
    And now thou boastest, and insult’st my fate.
    But hear thou this, fierce man, tremble to hear:
    The mighty Rustum shall avenge my death!
    My father, whom I seek through all the world,
    He shall avenge my death, and punish thee!”
      As when some hunter in the spring hath found
    A breeding eagle sitting on her nest,
    Upon the craggy isle of a hill-lake,
    And pierced her with an arrow as she rose,
    And followed her to find her where she fell
    Far off; anon her mate comes winging back
    From hunting, and a great way off descries
    His huddling young left sole; at that, he checks
    His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps
    Circles above his eyry, with loud screams
    Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she
    Lies dying, with the arrow in her side,
    In some far stony gorge out of his ken,
    A heap of fluttering feathers,--never more
    Shall the lake glass her, flying over it;
    Never the black and dripping precipices
    Echo her stormy scream as she sails by,--
    As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss,
    So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood
    Over his dying son, and knew him not.
      And with a cold, incredulous voice, he said,--
    “What prate is this of fathers and revenge?
    The mighty Rustum never had a son.”
      And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied,--
    “Ah, yes, he had! and that lost son am I.
    Surely the news will one day reach his ear,--
    Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries long,
    Somewhere, I know not where, but far from here;
    And pierce him like a stab, and make him leap
    To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee.
    Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only son!
    What will that grief, what will that vengeance, be?
    Oh, could I live till I that grief had seen!
    Yet him I pity not so much, but her,
    My mother, who in Ader-baijan dwells
    With that old king, her father, who grows gray
    With age, and rules over the valiant Koords.
    Her most I pity, who no more will see
    Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp,
    With spoils and honor, when the war is done.
    But a dark rumor will be bruited up,
    From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear;
    And then will that defenceless woman learn
    That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more;
    But that in battle with a nameless foe,
    By the far-distant Oxus, he is slain.”
      He spoke; and as he ceased, he wept aloud,
    Thinking of her he left, and his own death.
    He spoke; but Rustum listened, plunged in thought.
    Nor did he yet believe it was his son
    Who spoke, although he called back names he knew;
    For he had had sure tidings that the babe
    Which was in Ader-baijan born to him
    Had been a puny girl, no boy at all--
    So that sad mother sent him word, for fear
    Rustum should seek the boy, to train in arms.
    And so he deemed that either Sohrab took,
    By a false boast, the style of Rustum’s son;
    Or that men gave it him, to swell his fame.
    So deemed he: yet he listened, plunged in thought;
    And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide
    Of the bright rocking ocean sets to shore
    At the full moon; tears gathered in his eyes;
    For he remembered his own early youth,
    And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn,
    The shepherd from his mountain-lodge descries
    A far, bright city, smitten by the sun,
    Through many rolling clouds,--so Rustum saw
    His youth; saw Sohrab’s mother in her bloom;
    And that old king, her father, who loved well
    His wandering guest, and gave him his fair child
    With joy; and all the pleasant life they led,
    They three, in that long-distant summer-time,--
    The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt
    And hound, and morn on those delightful hills
    In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth,
    Of age and looks to be his own dear son,
    Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand;
    Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe
    Of an unskilful gardener has been cut,
    Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed,
    And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom,
    On the mown, dying grass,--so Sohrab lay,
    Lovely in death, upon the common sand.
    And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and said,--
      “O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son
    Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have loved!
    Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men
    Have told thee false: thou art not Rustum’s son.
    For Rustum had no son: one child he had,--
    But one,--a girl; who with her mother now
    Plies some light female task, nor dreams of us,--
    Of us she dreams not, nor of wounds, nor war.”
      But Sohrab answered him in wrath; for now
    The anguish of the deep-fixed spear grew fierce,
    And he desired to draw forth the steel,
    And let the blood flow free, and so to die.
    But first he would convince his stubborn foe;
    And, rising sternly on one arm, he said,--
      “Man, who art thou who dost deny my words?
    Truth sits upon the lips of dying men;
    And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
    I tell thee, pricked upon this arm I bear
    That seal which Rustum to my mother gave,
    That she might prick it on the babe she bore.”
      He spoke; and all the blood left Rustum’s cheeks,
    And his knees tottered, and he smote his hand
    Against his breast, his heavy mailèd hand,
    That the hard iron corslet clanked aloud;
    And to his heart he pressed the other hand,
    And in a hollow voice he spake, and said,--
      “Sohrab, that were a proof which could not lie!
    If thou show this, then art thou Rustum’s son.”
      Then, with weak hasty fingers, Sohrab loosed
    His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm,
    And showed a sign in faint vermilion points
    Pricked; as a cunning workman, in Pekin,
    Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase,
    An emperor’s gift,--at early morn he paints,
    And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp
    Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands,--
    So delicately pricked the sign appeared
    On Sohrab’s arm, the sign of Rustum’s seal.
    It was that griffin which of old reared Zal,
    Rustum’s great father, whom they left to die,
    A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks;
    Him that kind creature found, and reared, and loved;
    Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign.
    And Sohrab bared that image on his arm,
    And himself scanned it long with mournful eyes,
    And then he touched it with his hand, and said,--
      “How say’st thou? Is that sign the proper sign
    Of Rustum’s son, or of some other man’s?”
      He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood
    Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry,--
    _O boy--thy father!_ and his voice choked there.
    And then a dark cloud passed before his eyes,
    And his head swam, and he sank down to earth.
    But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and cast
    His arms about his neck, and kissed his lips,
    And with fond faltering fingers stroked his cheeks,
    Trying to call him back to life; and life
    Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes,
    And they stood wide with horror; and he seized
    In both his hands the dust which lay around,
    And threw it on his head, and smirched his hair,--
    His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms;
    And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast,
    And his sobs choked him; and he clutched his sword,
    To draw it, and forever let life out.
    But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hands,
    And with a soothing voice he spake, and said,--
      “Father, forbear! for I but meet to-day
    The doom which at my birth was written down
    In Heaven, and thou art Heaven’s unconscious hand.
    Surely my heart cried out that it was thou,
    When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too,
    I know it! But fate trod those promptings down
    Under its iron heel; fate, fate engaged
    The strife, and hurled me on my father’s spear.
    But let us speak no more of this. I find
    My father, let me feel that I have found!
    Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take
    My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks,
    And wash them with thy tears, and say, _My son!_
    Quick, quick! for numbered 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 released the heart
    Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth; he cast
    His arms round his son’s neck, and wept aloud,
    And kissed 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 in mute woe
    First to the one, then to the other, moved
    His head, as if inquiring what their grief
    Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes,
    The big warm tears rolled down, and caked 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 looked 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 snuffed 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 stroked thy neck, and given thee food,
    Corn in a golden platter, soaked with wine,
    And said, _O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!_ But I
    Have never known my grandsire’s furrowed face,
    Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan,
    Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund stream;
    But lodged among my father’s foes, and seen
    Afrasiab’s cities only, Samarcand,
    Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste,
    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
    In-doors 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 SICK KING IN BOKHARA._

HUSSEIN.

    O most just vizier, send away
    The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
    Them and their dues, this day! the king
    Is ill at ease, and calls for thee.

THE VIZIER.

    O merchants, tarry yet a day
    Here in Bokhara! but at noon
    To-morrow come, and ye shall pay
    Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
    As the law is, and go your way.

    O Hussein, lead me to the king!
    Thou teller of sweet tales, thine own,
    Ferdousi’s, and the others’, lead!
    How is it with my lord?

HUSSEIN.

                              Alone,
    Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
    O vizier! without lying down,
    In the great window of the gate,
    Looking into the Registàn,
    Where through the sellers’ booths the slaves
    Are this way bringing the dead man
    O vizier, here is the king’s door!

THE KING.

    O vizier, I may bury him?

THE VIZIER.

    O king, thou know’st, I have been sick
    These many days, and heard no thing
    (For Allah shut my ears and mind),
    Not even what thou dost, O king!
    Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
    Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
    To speak in order what hath chanced.

THE KING.

    O vizier, be it as thou say’st!

HUSSEIN.

    Three days since, at the time of prayer,
    A certain Moollah, with his robe
    All rent, and dust upon his hair,
    Watched my lord’s coming forth, and pushed
    The golden mace-bearers aside,
    And fell at the king’s feet, and cried,--

    “Justice, O king, and on myself!
    On this great sinner, who did break
    The law, and by the law must die!
    Vengeance, O king!”

                            But the king spake:
    “What fool is this, that hurts our ears
    With folly? or what drunken slave?
    My guards, what! prick him with your spears!
    Prick me the fellow from the path!”

    As the king said, so was it done,
    And to the mosque my lord passed on.

    But on the morrow, when the king
    Went forth again, the holy book
    Carried before him, as is right,
    And through the square his way he took;

    My man comes running, flecked with blood
    From yesterday, and falling down
    Cries out most earnestly, “O king,
    My lord, O king, do right, I pray!

    “How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
    If I speak folly? but a king,
    Whether a thing be great or small,
    Like Allah, hears and judges all.

    “Wherefore hear thou! Thou know’st, how fierce
    In these last days the sun hath burned;
    That the green water in the tanks
    Is to a putrid puddle turned;
    And the canal, that from the stream
    Of Samarcand is brought this way,
    Wastes and runs thinner every day.

    ‘Now I at nightfall had gone forth
    Alone, and in a darksome place
    Under some mulberry-trees I found
    A little pool; and in short space
    With all the water that was there
    I filled my pitcher, and stole home
    Unseen; and having drink to spare,
    I hid the can behind the door,
    And went up on the roof to sleep.

    “But in the night, which was with wind
    And burning dust, again I creep
    Down, having fever, for a drink.

    “Now, meanwhile had my brethren found
    The water-pitcher, where it stood
    Behind the door upon the ground,
    And called my mother; and they all,
    As they were thirsty, and the night
    Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
    That they sate with it, in my sight,
    Their lips still wet, when I came down.

    “Now mark! I, being fevered, sick,
    (Most unblest also), at that sight
    Brake forth, and cursed them--dost thou hear?--
    One was my mother.---- Now do right!”

    But my lord mused a space, and said,--
    “Send him away, sirs, and make on!
    It is some madman,” the king said.
    As the king bade, so was it done.

    The morrow, at the self-same hour,
    In the king’s path, behold, the man,
    Not kneeling, sternly fixed! He stood
    Right opposite, and thus began,
    Frowning grim down: “Thou wicked king,
    Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear!
    What! must I howl in the next world,
    Because thou wilt not listen here?

    “What! wilt thou pray, and get thee grace,
    And all grace shall to me be grudged?
    Nay, but I swear, from this thy path
    I will not stir till I be judged!”

    Then they who stood about the king
    Drew close together, and conferred;
    Till that the king stood forth, and said,
    “Before the priests thou shalt be heard.”

    But when the Ulemas were met,
    And the thing heard, they doubted not;
    But sentenced him, as the law is,
    To die by stoning on the spot.

    Now the king charged us secretly:
    “Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
    Yet, if he seek to fly, give way:
    Hinder him not, but let him go.”

    So saying, the king took a stone,
    And cast it softly; but the man,
    With a great joy upon his face,
    Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.

    So they, whose lot it was, cast stones,
    That they flew thick, and bruised him sore.
    But he praised Allah with loud voice,
    And remained kneeling as before.

    My lord had covered up his face;
    But when one told him, “He is dead,”
    Turning him quickly to go in,
    “Bring thou to me his corpse,” he said.

    And truly, while I speak, O king,
    I hear the bearers on the stair:
    Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?
   --Ho! enter ye who tarry there!

THE VIZIER.

    O king, in this I praise thee not!
    Now must I call thy grief not wise.
    Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
    To find such favor in thine eyes?

    Nay, were he thine own mother’s son,
    Still thou art king, and the law stands.
    It were not meet the balance swerved,
    The sword were broken in thy hands.

    But being nothing, as he is,
    Why for no cause make sad thy face?
    Lo, I am old! three kings ere thee
    Have I seen reigning in this place.

    But who, through all this length of time,
    Could bear the burden of his years,
    If he for strangers pained his heart
    Not less than those who merit tears?

    Fathers we _must_ have, wife and child,
    And grievous is the grief for these;
    This pain alone, which _must_ be borne,
    Makes the head white, and bows the knees.

    But other loads than this his own,
    One man is not well made to bear.
    Besides, to each are his own friends,
    To mourn with him, and show him care.

    Look, this is but one single place,
    Though it be great; all the earth round,
    If a man bear to have it so,
    Things which might vex him shall be found.

    Upon the Russian frontier, where
    The watchers of two armies stand
    Near one another, many a man,
    Seeking a prey unto his hand,

    Hath snatched a little fair-haired slave;
    They snatch also, towards Mervè,
    The Shiah dogs, who pasture sheep,
    And up from thence to Orgunjè.

    And these all, laboring for a lord,
    Eat not the fruit of their own hands;
    Which is the heaviest of all plagues,
    To that man’s mind who understands.

    The kaffirs also (whom God curse!)
    Vex one another, night and day;
    There are the lepers, and all sick;
    There are the poor, who faint alway.