SOHRAB AND RUSTUM
AN EPISODE
A ND the first grey of morning fill'd the east,
** And fog' rose out of the Oxus stream.
But all the Tartar camp along the stream
Was hush'd, 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 grey 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, I0
Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa's tent.
Through the black Tartar tents he pass'd, which
stood
Clustering like beehives on the low flat strand
Of Oxus, where the summer-floods overflow
When the sun melts the snows in high Pamere; 15
Through the black tents he pass'd, 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 crown'd the top 20
With a clay fort; but that was falPn; and now
The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent,
A dome of laths, and o'er it felts were spread.
And Sohrab came there, and went in, and stood
Upon the thick piled carpets in the tent, 25
An<J found the old man sleeping on his bed
Of rugs and felts, and near him lay his arms: