And I were nothing but a common man,
A poor, mean soldier, and without renown,
So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! 815
Or rather would that I, even I myself,
Might now be lying on this bloody sand,
Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine,
Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou;
And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan; 820
And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine;
And say:  O son, I weep thee not too sore,
For willingly, I know, thou met’st thine end!
But now in blood and battles was my youth,
And full of blood and battles is my age, 825
And I shall never end this life of blood.”

Then, at the point of death, Sohrab replied:—­
“A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man! 
But thou shalt yet have peace; only not now,
Not yet! but thou shalt have it on that day, deg. deg.830
When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship,
Thou and the other peers of Kai Khosroo,
Returning home over the salt blue sea,
From laying thy dear master in his grave.”

And Rustum gazed in Sohrab’s face, and said:—­ 835
“Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! 
Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure.”

He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him, and took
The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased
His wound’s imperious anguish; but the blood 840
Came welling from the open gash, and life
Flow’d with the stream;—­all down his cold white side
The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soil’d,
Like the soil’d tissue of white violets
Left, freshly gather’d, on their native bank, 845
By children whom their nurses call with haste. 
Indoors from the sun’s eye; his head droop’d low,
His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay—­
White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps,
Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame, 850
Convulsed him back to life, he open’d them,
And fix’d them feebly on his father’s face;
Till now all strength was ebb’d, and from his limbs
Unwillingly the spirit fled away,
Regretting the warm mansion which it left, 855
And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world.

So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead;
And the great Rustum drew his horseman’s cloak
Down o’er his face, and sate by his dead son. 
As those black granite pillars, once high-rear’d 860
By Jemshid in Persepolis, deg. to bear deg.861
His house, now ’mid their broken flights of steps
Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side—­
So in the sand lay Rustum by his son.