Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/147



When the Sultan Sljah-Zaman

Goes to the city Ispahan,

Even before he gets so far

As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,

At the last of the thirty palace-gates,

The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,

Orders a feast in his favorite room, —

Glittering squares of colored ice,

Sweetened with syrup, tinctured with spice,

Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,

Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,

Limes, and citrons, and apricots,

And wines that are known to Eastern princes;

And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots

Of spiced meats and costliest fish,

And all that the curious palate could wish,

Pass in and out of the cedarn doors;

Scattered over mosaic floors

Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,

And a musical fountain throws its jets

Of a hundred colors into the air.

The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,

And stains with the henna-plant the tips

Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips

Till they bloom again, — but, alas! that rose

Not for the Sultan buds and blows;

Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,

When he goes to the city Ispahan.

Then, at a wave of her sunny hand,

The dancing girls of Samarcand

Float in like mists from Fairy-land!

And to the low, voluptuous swoons

Of music rise and fall the moons

Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood

Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes;

And there, in this Eastern Paradise,

Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,

And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,

Sits Rose-in-Eloom, 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.