Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/99



SOHRAB AND RUSTUM.5

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