The Atlantic Monthly, page 229 by Various Authors
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se, Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood, And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh, Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan, Sipping the wines of Astrakhan; And her Arab lover sits with her. That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan.
"Now, when I see an extra light, Flaming, flickering on the night From my neighbor's casement opposite, I know as well as I know to pray, I know as well as a tongue can say, That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman Has gone to the city Ispahan."
As subtilely beautiful as this, and even richer in color and flavor than this, is the complete little poem which Mr. Aldrich calls a fragment:--
"DRESSING THE BRIDE.
"So, after bath, the slave-girls brought The broidered raiment for her wear, The misty izar from Mosul, The pearls and opals for her hair, The slippers for her supple feet, (Two radiant crescent moons they were,) And lavender, and spikenard sweet, And attars, nedd, and richest musk. When they had finished dressing her, (The eye of morn, the heart's desire!) Like one pale star against the dusk, A single diamond on her brow Trembled with its imprisoned fire!"
Too long for quotation here, but by no means too long to be read many times over, is "Pampinea," an idyl in which the poet's fancy plays lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio's Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of dreams,--breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly; but how beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the jewels strung upon it!
"And knowing how in other times Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes Of love and wine and dance, I spread My mantle by almond-tree, 'And here, beneath the rose,' I said, 'I'll hear thy Tuscan melody.' I heard a tale that was not told In those ten dreamy days of old, When Heaven, for some divine offence, Smote Florence with the pestilenc