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.  At this point Sohrab, whose chief interest in life was to find his father, demanded to know if his enemy were not Rustum; but the latter was disguised and denied his identity.  On the first day of the fight Rustum was overcome, but his life was spared by a trick and by the generosity of Sohrab.  On the second day Rustum prevailed, and mortally wounded his antagonist.  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.

Using this interesting material, Arnold produced a poem which has the rare and difficult combination of classic reserve and romantic feeling.  It is written in blank verse, and one has only to read the first few lines to see that the poet is not a master of his instrument.  The lines are seldom harmonious, and we must frequently change the accent of common words, or lay stress on unimportant particles, to show the rhythm.  Arnold frequently copies Milton, especially in his repetition of ideas and phrases; but the poem as a whole is lacking in Milton’s wonderful melody.

The classic influence on Sohrab and Rustum is especially noticeable in Arnold’s use of materials.  Fights are short; grief is long; therefore the poet gives few lines to the combat, but lingers over the son’s joy at finding his father, and the father’s quenchless sorrow at the death of his son.  The last lines especially, with their “passionate grief set to solemn music,” make this poem one of the best, on the whole, that Arnold has written.  And the exquisite ending, where the Oxus, unmindful of the trivial strifes of men, flows on sedately to join “his luminous home of waters” is most suggestive of the poet’s conception of the orderly life of nature, in contrast with the doubt and restlessness of human life.

Next in importance to the narrative poems are the elegies, “Thyrsis,” “The Scholar-Gipsy,” “Memorial Verses,” “A Southern Night,” “Obermann,” “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” and “Rugby Chapel.”  All these are worthy of careful reading, but the best is “Thyrsis,” a lament for the poet Clough, which is sometimes classed with Milton’s Lycidas and Shelley’s Adonais.  Among the minor poems the reader will find the best expression of Arnold’s ideals and methods in “Dover Beach,” the love lyrics entitled “Switzerland,” “Requiescat,” “Shakespeare,” “The Future,” “Kensington Gardens,” “Philomela,” “Human Life,” “Callicles’s Song,” “Morality,” and “Geist’s Grave.”—­the last being an exquisite tribute to a little dog which, like all his kind, had repaid our scant crumbs of affection with a whole life’s devotion.