“And his voice choked there,
And then a dark cloud pass’d before his eyes,
And his head swam, and he sank down to earth. 
But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and cast
His arms about his neck, and kiss’d his lips,
And with fond faltering fingers stroked his cheeks,
Trying to call him back to life:  and life
Came back to Rustum; and he op’d his eyes;
And they stood wide with horrour:  and he seized
In both his hands the dust which lay around,
And threw it on his face, and smirched his hair,
His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms: 
And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast,
And his sobs choked him, and he clutched his sword
To draw it, and for ever let life out. 
But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hand,
And with a soothing voice he spoke, and said
’Father, forbear, for I but meet to-day
The doom that at my birth was written down
In Heaven, and thou art Heaven’s unconscious hand. 
Surely my heart cried out that it was thou,
When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too,
I know it; but Fate trod those promptings down
Under its iron heel; Fate, Fate engaged
The strife, and hurled me on my father’s spear. 
But let us speak no more of this:  I find
My father:  let me feel that I have found. 
Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take
My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks,
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 touched.