Afghans

"For what care I, though all speak Sohrab’s fame? For would that I myself had such a son, And not that one slight helpless girl I have, A son so fam’d, so brave, to send to war, And I to tarry with the snow-hair’d Zal, My father, whom the robber Afghans vex, And clip his borders short, and drive his herds, And he has none to guard his weak old age."

"Four Afghans sit in evening light, With features dusked by turbans white,But eyes like sun-glow I’ve seen smoulder On a lonely desert boulder.In circle, cross-legged, they converse, With accents guttural and terse.Unknowable are nomad faces Till you haunt all desert places:The same pent dreams glint there unknown As on the eve-lit boulder-stone.Earth brother, I must stranger be To such fierce taciturnity."