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.