And said-O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!' But I | And plant a far-seen pillar over all;
Have never known my grandsire's furrowed face,
Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan,
Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund stream;
But lodged among my father's foes, and seen
Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand,
Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste,
And the black Toorkmun tents; and only drunk
The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend,
Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep,
The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream
The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die."
And, with a heavy groan, Rustum replied:
"Oh that its waves were flowing over me!
Oh that I saw its grains of yellow silt
Roll tumbling in the current o'er
And, with a grave, mild voice, Sohrab replied:
"Desire not that, my father! Thou must live;
For some are born to do great deeds, and live;
As some are born to be obscured, and die.
Do thou the deeds I die too young to do,
And reap a second glory in thine age;
Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine.
But come! thou seest this great host of men
Which follow me; 1 pray thee, slay not these!
Let me entreat for them—what have they done?
They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star.
Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
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,
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 son, 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;
And I, not thou, be borne to Seïstan;
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."
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But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, Not yet. But thou shalt have it on that day
But carry me with thee to Seïstan,
And place me on a bed, and mourn for me
Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy friends.
And thou must lay me in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above my bones,
And plant a far-seen pillar over all;
That so the passing horseman on the waste
May see my tomb a great way off, and say:
Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies there,
Whom his great father did in ignorance kill·
And I be not forgotten in my grave.”
And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied:
"Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son,
So shall it be; for I will burn my tents,
And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me,
And carry thee away to Seïstan,
And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee,
With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends.
And I will lay thee in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above thy bones,
When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship,
Thou and the other peers of Kai-Khosroo,
Returning home over the salt, blue sea,
From laying thy dear master in his grave.”
And Rustum gazed on Sohrab's face, and
said:
"Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea!
Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure."
He spoke and Sohrab smiled on him, and took
The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased
His wound's imperious anguish. But the blood
Came welling from the open gash, and life
Flowed with the stream; all down his cold white
side
The crimson torrent ran, dim now, and soiled -
Like the soiled tissue of white violets
Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank
By romping children, whom their nurses call
From the hot fields at noon. His head drooped
His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay —
White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps,
Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame,
Convulsed him back to life, he opened them,
And fixed them feebly on his father's face.
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 Orgunje,
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
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
WAIL for Dædalus, all that is fairest!
All that is tuneful in air or wave!
Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest,
Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave!
Statues, bend your heads in sorrow,
Ye that glance 'mid ruins old,
That know not a past, nor expect a morrow,
On many a moonlight Grecian wold!
By sculptured cave and speaking river,
Thee, Dædalus, oft the nymphs recall;
The leaves with a sound of winter quiver,
Murmur thy name, and withering fall.
Yet are thy visions in soul the grandest
Of all that crowd on the tear-dimmed eye,
Though, Dædalus, thou no more commandest
New stars to that ever-widening sky.
Ever thy phantoms arise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; By bed and table they lord it o'er us,
With looks of beauty, and words of good.
Calmly they show us mankind victorious
O'er all that is aimless, blind, and base; Their presence has made our nature glorious, Unveiling our night's illumined face.
Thy toil has won them a god-like quiet;
Thou hast wrought their path to a lovely sphere;
Their eyes to peace rebuke our riot,
And shape us a home of refuge here.
For Dædalus breathed in them his spirit;
In them their sire his beauty sees;
We too, a younger brood, inherit
The gifts and blessing bestowed on these.
But ah! their wise and graceful seeming,
Recalls the more that the sage is gone;
Weeping we wake from deceitful dreaming,
And find our voiceless chamber lone.
Dædalus, thou from the twilight fleest,
Which thou with vision hast made so bright, And when no more those shapes thou seest, Wanting thine eye they lose their light.
IPHIGENEIA AND AGAMEMNON.
Even in the noblest of man's creations, Those fresh worlds round this old of ours, When the seer is gone the orphaned nations See but the tombs of perished powers.
Wail for Dædalus, earth and ocean! Stars and sun, lament for him! Ages quake, in strange commotion ! All ye realms of life, be dim!
Wail for Dædalus, awful voices !
From earth's deep centre mankind appall! Seldom ye sound, and then Death rejoices, For he knows that then the mightiest fall. JOHN STERLING.
Iphigeneia and Agamemnon.
IPHIGENEIA, when she heard her doom
At Aulis, and when all beside the king
Had gone away, took his right hand, and said:
"O father! I am young and very happy.
I do not think the pious Calchas heard
Distinctly what the goddess spake; - old age
Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew
My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood,
While I was resting on her knee both arms,
And hitting it to make her mind my words,
And looking in her face, and she in mine,
Might not he, also, hear one word amiss,
Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?"
The father placed his cheek upon her head,
And tears dropt down it; but the king of men
Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more.
"O father! sayest thou nothing? Hearest thou not
Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour,
Listened to fondly, and awakened me
To hear my voice amid the voice of birds,
When it was inarticulate as theirs,
And the down deadened it within the nest ?"
He moved her gently from him, silent still;
And this, and this alone, brought tears from her,
Although she saw fate nearer. Then with sighs:
"I thought to have laid down my hair before
Benignant Artemis, and not dimmed
Her polished altar with my virgin blood;
I thought to have selected the white flowers
To please the nymphs, and to have asked of each
By name, and with no sorrowful regret,
Whether, since both my parents willed the change,
I might at Hymen's feet bend my clipt brow;
And (after these who mind us girls the most)
Adore our own Athene, that she would
Regard me mildly with her azure eyes—
But, father, to see you no more, and see
Your love, O father! go ere I am gone!"
Gently he moved her off, and drew her back,
Bending his lofty head far over hers,
And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst.
He turned away-not far, but silent still.
She now first shuddered; for in him, so nigh,
So long a silence seemed the approach of death,
And like it. Once again she raised her voice:
"O father! if the ships are now detained,
And all your vows move not the gods above,
When the knife strikes me there will be one prayer
The less to them; and purer can there be
Any, or more fervent, than the daughter's prayer
For her dear father's safety and success?"
A groan that shook him shook not his resolve.
An aged man now entered, and without
One word, stepped slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw
The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes.
Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried:
"O father! grieve no more: the ships can sail."
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
The Lamentation for Celin.
Ar the gate of old Granada, when all its bolts are barred,
At twilight, at the Vega-gate, there is a trampling heard;
There is a trampling heard, as of horses treading
And a weeping voice of women, and a heavy sound of woe.
What tower is fallen? what star is set? what chief
"A tower is fallen, a star is set! Alas! alas for Celin!"
Three times they knock-three times they cry — and wide the doors they throw; Dejectedly they enter, and mournfully they go;
In gloomy lines they, mustering, stand beneath the Down to the dust men bow their heads, and ashes black they strew
Each horseman grasping in his hand a black and Upon their broidered garments of crimson, green, flaming torch; and blue;
Wet is each eye as they go by, and all around is Before each gate the bier stands still-then bursts wailing, the loud bewailing For all have heard the misery-"Alas! alas for From door and lattice, high and low—" Alas! alas Celin!" for Celin!"
Him, yesterday, a Moor did slay, of Bencerraje's An old, old woman cometh forth, when she hears the people cry
"Twas at the solemn jousting-around the nobles Her hair is white as silver, like horn her glazed eye: stood; "Twas she that nursed him at her breast, that nursed him long ago;
The nobles of the land were by, and ladies bright and fair
Looked from their latticed windows, the haughty sight to share;
But now the nobles all lament—the ladies are bewailing
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