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Updated: May 11, 2025
Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," after finishing its tragic story of the son slain by the unwitting father, closes with a lyric description of the majestic Oxus stream flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all seems, this close is intensely personal, permeated with the same tender stoicism which colors Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "A Summer Night."
He got up and began folding his blankets. The Armenian whom Kagig had called Eflaton threw himself to the floor and shrieked in agony of misery. Rustum Khan stepped over him and came and stood in front of Monty. "These men are fools," he said. "They know exactly what the Turks will do. They have all seen massacres before. Yet not one of them was ready when the hour set for this one came.
The blank-verse tail-piece is finer still in execution; it is, with the still finer companion-coda of Sohrab and Rustum, the author's masterpiece in the kind, and it is, like that, an early and consummate example of Mr Arnold's favourite device of finishing without a finish, of "playing out the audience," so to speak, with something healing and reconciling, description, simile, what not, to relieve the strain of his generally sad philosophy and his often melancholy themes.
Then he recognized his own son by a gold bracelet which he had long ago given to his wife Temineh. The two armies, rushing into battle, were stopped by the sight of father and son weeping in each other's arms. Sohrab died, the war ceased, and Rustum went home to a life of sorrow and remorse.
I have wandered to and fro, hoping for the fervor back again, yet finding none. And now, sahib, I find you I, Rustum Khan, at a loose end for lack of inspiration. I have prayed. Colonel sahib bahadur, I believe thou art the gift of God!" Monty sought our eyes in turn in the lantern-lit darkness. We made no sign. None of us but he knew the Rajput, so it was plainly his affair.
Monty strode toward Rustum Khan; the Rajput was the first to speak. "Colonel sahib, I spoke wise words!" It seemed to me that Monty looked very keenly at him before he answered. "Have you had supper, Rustum Khan? You look to me feverish from overwork and lack of food." "What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" the Rajput answered.
Seeing he was neither hurt nor indignant, she laughed at Fred, spat at him, and whipped her stallion forward in pursuit of Kagig, breaking between him and Monty to pour news in his ear. "A curse on Rustum Khan!" laughed Fred, spitting out red buds. "He didn't do his duty!" He had hardly said that when the Rajput came spurring and thundering along from the rear.
While he was gone his son Sohrab was born, grew to manhood, and became the hero of the Turan army. War arose between the two peoples, and two hostile armies were encamped by the Oxus. Each army chose a champion, and Rustum and Sohrab found themselves matched in mortal combat between the lines.
"We obey Kagig at times," he said, as if that admission settled the matter. Then there was interruption. Rustum Khan came spurring down the road with his pistol holsters unbuttoned and his saber clattering like a sutler's pots and pans, to see whether we needed help.
Most of the new poems here are at a level but a little lower than this part of Sohrab and Rustum, while some of them are even above it as wholes.
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