| |
AND 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 | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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: | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| With a clay fort: but that was fallen; and now | |
| The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa’s tent, | |
| A dome of laths, and o’er it felts were spread. * * * * * | |
| The sun, by this, had risen, and cleared the fog | |
| From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands: | 25 |
| And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed | |
| Into the open plain; so Haman bade; | |
| Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled | |
| The host, and still was in his lusty prime. | |
| From the black tents, long files of horse, they streamed: | 30 |
| As when, some gray November morn, the files, | |
| In marching order spread, of long-necked cranes, | |
| Stream over Casbin, and the southern slopes | |
| Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries, | |
| Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound | 35 |
| For the warm Persian sea-board: so they streamed. | |
| The Tartars of the Oxus, the King’s guard, | |
| First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears; | |
| Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come | |
| And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares. | 40 |
| Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south, | |
| The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, | |
| And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; | |
| Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink | |
| The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. | 45 |
| And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came | |
| From far, and more doubtful service owned; | |
| The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks | |
| Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards | |
| And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes | 50 |
| Who roam o’er Kipchak and the northern waste, | |
| Kalmuks and unkemped Kuzzaks, tribes who stray | |
| Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, | |
| Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere. | |
| These all filed out from camp into the plain. | 55 |
| And on the other side the Persians formed: | |
| First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seemed, | |
| The Ilyats of Khorassan: and behind, | |
| The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot, | |
| Marshalled battalions bright in burnished steel. * * * * * | 60 |
| 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 | 65 |
| 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 | 70 |
| 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 | 75 |
| His luminous home of waters opens, bright | |
| And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars | |
| Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. | |
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