And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee,

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With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends.

And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above tl 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,

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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 sou, 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;

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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 re

plied,

"A life of blood indeed, thou dreadfu man!

But thou shalt yet have peace; only not

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, 880 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 rusty 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

She will not come, though you call all day; Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay,
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away ?
Once she sate with you and me,

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On a red gold throne in the heart of the

Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;

Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the whitewalled town;

Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,

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Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully.

Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy!

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white sleeping town;

At the church on the hill-side,

And then come back down,

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HARK! ah, the nightingale —

The tawny-throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a

burst!

What triumph! hark! what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-
world pain.

Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy racked heart and brain
Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

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Here, through the moonlight on this English grass.

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and seared eyes

20

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's

shame ?

Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make

resound

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the nightair!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand, Begin and cease, and then again begin, With tremulons cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Egean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery: we

Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith

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