Into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night.
A filmy veil of pearl-gray mist hung over the slumbering city and the witchery of the scene was even more enthralling than that which so captivated me the preceding evening. Presently
The magic of daylight awakes
A new wonder each minute, as it slowly breaks;
Hills, cupolas, fountains, called forth every one
Out of darkness, as if just born of the Sun.
Yes, I was in Bagdad, the fairy city of boyhood’s dreams, the glittering home of pomp and pleasure, where the fair Zobeide dwelt in a palace with spangled floors and marble stairs with golden balustrades; where there was a riot of broidered sofas, damask curtains, silk tapestry, purple robes from the most famous looms of the East; where a joyous group of bejeweled dancing girls were wont, to the sound of harp and lute and dulcimer, to carol away, with voices as melodious as that of Israfel, the cares and ennui of their pleasure-sated mistress.
Willingly I yielded myself to the hypnotic influence of the spiritus loci. In fancy I saw Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; the one-eyed calenders as they told their fascinating tales; the fishermen as they deluded the heavy-witted jinn; Harun-al-Rashid and Jaffer as they wandered under their double-collared cloak through the somber streets of the capital; the radiant homes of wealth and luxury, which gleamed with the subdued light of a myriad of golden lamps and reëchoed with the heart-easing strains of sweet music and the gladsome voices of midnight revelry.
But the illusion was of short duration. The mauve-shot veil of tenuous mist lifted under the ardent rays of the morning sun and the magic city of Harun and his favorite Zobeide vanished to give place to the squalid houses, narrow, crooked streets, and crumbling walls of a time-stricken, war-battered city which is now but a shadow of what it was in the days of its pristine glory.