To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee.
Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only son!
What will that grief, what will that venge-
ance, be?

Oh, could I live till I that grief had seen!
Yet him I pity not so much, but her,
My mother, who in Ader-baijan dwells 590
With that old king, her father, who grows

gray

With age, and rules over the valiant Koords.
Her most I pity, who no more will see
Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp,
With spoils and honor, when the war is
done.

But a dark rumor will be bruited up,
From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear;
And then will that defenceless woman learn
That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more;
But that in battle with a nameless foe,
By the far-distant Oxus, he is slain."
He spoke; and as he ceased, he wept

aloud,

600

And so he deemed that either Sohrab took, By a false boast, the style of Rustum's son; Or that men gave it him, to swell his fame. So deemed he: yet he listened, plunged in thought;

And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide Of the bright rocking ocean sets to shore At the full moon; tears gathered in his eyes; For he remembered his own early youth, And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn, The shepherd from his mountain-lodge descries

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