Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/125

Rh 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.