Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/118

80 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,