Bear odors to the balm pure sweets exhaling?
Hang on the orange bough a riper load?
Lend fires to Syria's East at dawn unveiling?
Pave with new stars [1] the Night's all-glittering road?
No verses here!—Verse would despair of raising
Aught save an image dark and faint of thee;
But gently in yon basin's mirror gazing
Behold thyself! Embodied Poesy!
When through the kiosque's grated ogive straying,
The sea-breeze mingles with the Moka's fume,
Where softly o'er thy form the moonbeams playing
Glance on thy couch, rich from Palmyra's loom—
When on the jasmine tube thy lip half closes,
Veiled with its golden threads in bright array,
While ruffling at thy breath, fragrant with roses,
Murmur the drops within the Narquité—
When as winged perfumes rise into thy brain,
In light caressing clouds around thee wreathing
All love's and youth's lost visions throng again,
An atmosphere of dreams thy listeners breathing—
When in thy tale the Arab steed forth starting
Yields foaming to thy curb of infancy,
And that triumphant glance obliquely darting
Equals the summer-lightning of his eye—
When thy fair arm, of loveliest symmetry,
Supports the fairer brow in thought reclining,
While gleams with diamond fires thy poniard nigh
In quick reflection of the torch's shining—
Naught is there in the murmured words of feeling,
Naught in the Poet's ever dreaming brow,
Naught in pure sighs from purest bosoms stealing,
Naught redolent of Poesy as thou!
With me the age has flown when Love, life's flower,
Perfumes the heart—my warmest accents falter,
And beauty o'er my soul has lost her power—
Cold is the light I kindle on her altar!
The harp is this chilled bosom's only queen,
But how would homage from its depths have burst
In gushing minstrelsy at bright sixteen,
If then these eyes had rested on thee first!