And wash them with thy tears, and say "My son!"
Quick: quick! for numbered are my sands of life,
And swift; for like the lightning to this field
I came, and like the wind I go away.
Sudden and swift, and like a passing wind:
But it was writ in Heaven that this should be.'
So said he: and his voice released the heart
Of Rustum; and his tears broke forth: he cast
His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud,
And kiss'd him; and awe fell on both the hosts
When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, the
horse,
With his head bowing to the ground and mane
Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe
First to the one, then to the other mov'd
His head, as if enquiring what their grief
Might mean; and from his dark compassionate
eyes
The big warm tears roll'd down and caked the
sand."

As a picture of human life in Homer's manner, we
cannot see why this passage, and indeed the whole poem,
should not be thought as good as any one of the
episodes in the "AEneid." We are not comparing Mr.
Arnold with Virgil: for it is one thing to have written
an epic and another to have written a small fragment;
but as a working up of a single incident it may rank
by the side of Nisus and Euryalus, and deeper chords
of feeling are touched in it than Virgil has ever