Rustum

“ To seek out Rustum—seek him not through fight!
Seek him in peace, and carry to his arms,
O Sohrab, carry an unwounded son!
But far hence seek him, for he is not here.
For now it is not as when I was young,
When Rustum was in front of every fray:
But now he keeps apart, and sits at home,
In Seistan, with Zal, his father old;
Whether that his own mighty strength at last
Feels the abhorred approaches of old age;
Or in some quarrel with the Persian king.
There go!—Thou wilt not? Yet my heart forebodes
Danger or death awaits thee on this field. ”

“ And Rustum follow'd his own blow, and fell
To his knees, and with his fingers clutch'd the sand;
And now might Sohrab have unsheathed his sword,
And pierced the mighty Rustum while he lay
Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with sand;
But he look'd on, and smiled, nor bared his sword,
But courteously drew back, and spoke, and said:—
"Thou strik'st too hard! that club of thine will float
Upon the summer-floods, and not my bones.
But rise, and be not wroth! not wroth am I;
No, when I see thee, wrath forsakes my soul.
Thou say'st, thou art not Rustum; be it so! ”

“ As a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, An emperor's gift; at early morn he paints, And all day long; and, when night comes, the lamp [Pg 36] Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands: So delicately pricked the sign appeared On Sohrab's arm—the sign of Rustum's seal. It was that griffin, which of old reared Zal, Rustum's great father, whom they left to die, A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks, Him that kind creature found and reared and loved. Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign. ”

“ And clasp'd his hand within his own, and said:—
"O, by thy father's head! by thine own soul!
Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?"
But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth,
And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:—
"Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean!
False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys.
For if I now confess this thing he asks,
And hide it not, but say: Rustum is here!
He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes,
But he will find some pretext not to fight, [76]
And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts
A belt or sword perhaps, and go his way. ”

“ When Sohrab dares our bravest forth, and seeks
Thee most of all, and thou, whom most he seeks,
Hidest thy face? Take heed lest men should say,—
Like some old miser, Rustum hoards his fame,
And shuns to peril it with younger men."
⁠And, greatly moved, then Rustum made reply,—
"O Gudurz, wherefore dost thou say such word?
Thou knowest better words than this to say.
What is one more, one less, obscure or famed,
Valiant or craven, young or old, to me?
Are not they mortal? am not I myself?
But who for men of naught would do great deeds?
Come, thou shalt see how Rustum hoards his fame! ”

“ Of an unskilful gardener has been cut,
Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed,
And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom,
On the mown, dying grass—so Sohrab lay,
Lovely in death, upon the common sand.
And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and said:—
"O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son
Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have loved.
Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men
Have told thee false—thou art not Rustum's son.
For Rustum had no son; one child he had—
But one—a girl ”

“ And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied: "Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be; for I will burn my tents, And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me, And carry thee away to Seïstan, And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee, With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends. And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above thy bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all; And men shall not forget thee in thy grave; And I will spare thy host—yea, let them go— Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. ”

“ And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast
His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw
Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came.
As some rich woman, on a winter’s morn,
Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge
Who with numb blackened fingers makes her fire,—
At cock-crow, on a starlit winter’s morn,
When the frost flowers the whitened window-panes,—
And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts
Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed
The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar
Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
All the most valiant chiefs ”

“ Then Sohrab threw In turn, and full struck Rustum's shield. Sharp rang The iron plates, rang sharp, but turned the spear. And Rustum seized his club, which none but he Could wield—an unlapped trunk it was, and huge, Still rough; like those which men, in treeless plains, To build them boats, fish from the flooded rivers, Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time Has made in Himalayan forests wrack, And strewn the channels with torn boughs—so huge The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke ”

“ Come down and help us, Rustum, or we lose."
[Rustum at first declines, but stung by the taunt of Gudurz he agrees to fight—to be unknown by name.]
He spoke; but Rustum answer'd with a smile:—
"Go to! if Iran's Chiefs are old, then I
Am older: if the young are weak, the King
Errs strangely: for the King, for Kai Khosroo, 220
Himself is young, and honours younger men,
And lets the aged moulder to their graves.
Rustum he loves no more, but loves the young—
The young may rise at Sohrab's vaunts, not I.
For what care I, though all speak Sohrab's fame? ”

“ Back out to sea, to the deep waves of death,
We know not, and no search will make us know:
Only the event will teach us in its hour."
[Sohrab avoids Rustum's blow. Rustum falls on the sand, and has his life spared by his son.] ”

“ Rustum he was named, of the seed of Rustum the Hero even as was my mother. They were gentle and good, and it was their ancestors who built Ruszark when, fleeing from the might of Iskander, they were sealed in the hidden valley by the falling mountain.
“Then there sprang from one of the families of the nobles—Cherkis. Evil, evil was he, and as he grew he lusted for rule. On a night of terror he fell upon those who loved my father and slew ”

“ Read Sohrab and Rustum and write an account of it, having in mind the story, Arnold's use of his material, the style, and the classic elements in the poem. How does it compare in melody with the blank verse of Milton or Tennyson? What marked contrasts do you find between the poetry and the prose of Arnold?
10. Ruskin. In what respects is Ruskin "the prophet of modern society"? Read the first two lectures in Sesame and Lilies and then give Ruskin's views of labor, wealth, books, education, woman's sphere, and human society. How does he regard the commercialism of his age? ”

“ The prose of Ruskin is a treasure house. Nature portrayed as everyman's Holy Land; descriptions of mountain or landscape, and more beautiful descriptions of leaf or lichen or the glint of light on a breaking wave; appreciations of literature, and finer appreciations of life itself; startling views of art, and more revolutionary views of that frightful waste of human life and labor which we call political economy,—all these and many more impressions of nature, art and human society are eloquently recorded in the ten thousand pages which are the work of Ruskin's hand. ”

“ Ruskin is the poet and the high-priest of Nature. To him she reveals her mysteries, and he interprets them to a dull and commonplace world in language as glowing and impassioned as that of the prophets and priests of the olden time. No man, apparently, has seen the sea as Ruskin has seen it,—not even Byron, who wrote so majestic a hymn to it; no man has so seen the mountains, with his very soul transfixed in solemn awe; no one has felt as he the holy stillness of the forest aisles, or so described even the tiny wild flowers of the fields. ”

“ But Ruskin is a lover of landscape art and loves to see every blade of grass in a foreground lovingly dwelt upon. I cannot write down all he said as he and I leant over the piano where my drawings were. But it was with my artillery water colour, ‘The Crest of the Hill,’ that he was most pleased. He knelt down before it where it hung low down and held a candle before it the better to see it, and exclaimed ‘Wonderful!’ two or three times, and said it had ‘immense power.’ Thank you, Dudley Gallery, for not hanging it where Ruskin would never have seen it! ”

“ Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf and descended the other side of the mountains towards the Treasure Valley; and as he went he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it and was flowing in innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.
And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew and climbed among the moistening soil. ”

“ To most of his readers Ruskin has been exclusively the arm-chair philosopher, the dilettante of prints and pictures; but there was a vein of the old blood in him, as in the rest of us, which warmed to the rough sea-life that created Venice (read his prose poem thereon in "Modern Painters," vol. v., "The Wings of the Lion") , and England:—"Bare head, bare fist, bare foot, and blue jacket. If these will not save us, nothing will." ”

“ RUSUDAN stood by the couch, voiceless. The Arab leaned over the emperor, one knee on the couch, and touched his throat. He seized the chin of the struggling man and looked swiftly into the contorted face. Then he stepped back, glancing at the empty golden dish that had held the rice curry, and at the Georgian girl.
“No man may escape his fate,” he said calmly. ”

“ But no one failing in his first can succeed in a second attempt, and if anyone shall cast unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him and he will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away and deliberately walked into the center of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,--a blaze of intense light,--rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of the Golden River had evaporated.
"Oh!" cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney after him, "O dear, dear, dear me! My mug! my mug! my mug!" ”

“ As soon as Rustem had come within a short distance of the court of the king of Mázinderán, accounts reached his majesty of the approach of another ambassador, when a deputation of warriors was sent to receive him. Rustem observing them, and being in sight of the hostile army, with a view to show his strength, tore up a large tree on the road by the roots, and dexterously wielded it in his hand like a spear. ”

“ Raksh, and in a very short time a wild ass was caught with the lasso. Rustem struck a light with a flintstone, and making a fire with brambles and branches of trees, roasted the ass and ate it for his meal. This done he took the bridle from his horse, let him loose to graze upon the plain, and prepared himself to sleep in a bed of rushes. Now in the middle of this bed of rushes was a lion's lair, and at the end of the first watch the lion came back, and was astonished to see lying asleep on the rushes a man as tall as an elephant, with a horse standing near him. ”

“ I felt that a new world was opened to me, that I had seen that day the art of man in its full majesty for the first time ; and that there was also a strange and precious gift in myself enabling me to recognise it.' With this conviction Ruskin returned home in the autumn of 1845 to Denmark Hill, whither his parents had removed in 1843 to a large house with spacious grounds, and proceeded to write out a second volume of 'Modern Painters.' The enlargement of its scope was at once obvious. Instead of a defence of the moderns, we heard now the praise of the ancients. ”

“ Thus the usual brown tones of his foreground become warmed into sudden vigor, and are varied and enhanced with indescribable delight, when he finds himself by the shore of a moorland stream, where they truly express the stain of its golden rocks, and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and the usual serenity of his aërial blue is enriched into the softness and depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant slumber of some Highland lake, or temper the gloomy shadows of the evening upon its hills. ”

“ Ruskin's mind was so permeated with adoration of mountain scenery that his attempts at cool analysis of his own sensations failed, as would those of a priest who, worshipping before the altar, tried at the same time to give an analytical account of his state of mind. Ruskin 11 is the stern high priest of the worshippers of mountains; to him they are cathedrals designed by their glory and their gloom to lift humanity out of its baser self into the realization of high destinies. ”

“ Russel,” cried he, in very correct English, though with a Highland accent, “are you for peace or war? If for war, look to yourself. But if you are for peace and treaty, order your men to stand fast, and let you and me advance and meet each other half way.”
“I will treat,” replied Mr. Russel; “but can I trust to your keeping faith?”
“Trust!” exclaimed the other in an offended tone, and with an imperious air; “methinks you may well enough trust to the word and honour of a gentleman.” ”