By romping children, whom their nurses call

Indoors from the sun's eye; his head drooped low,

His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay

White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps,

Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame, 850 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,

855 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

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 isles885

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

890 And tranquil, from whose floor the newbathed stars

Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.