press shades; the minarets snowy hue,
And gleams of gold dissolve on skies of blue;
Daughter of Eastern art! the most divine,
Lovely, yet faithless bride of Constantine:
Fair Istamboul, whose tranquil mirror flings,
Back with delight thy thousand colourings;
And who no equal in the world dost know
Save thy own image, pictured thus below!
Dazzled--amazed--our eyes, half-blinded, fail,
While sweeps the phantasm past our gliding sail.
Like as in festive scene, some sudden light
Rises in clouds of stars upon the sight.
Struck with a splendour never seen before,
Drunk with the perfumes wafted from the shore;
Approaching near these peopled groves we deem
That from enchantment rose the gorgeous dream.
Day without voice;--and motion without sound;
Silently beautiful! this haunted ground
Is paved with roofs beyond the bounds of sight,
Countless and colour'd; wrapp'd in golden light!
'Mid groves of cypress, measureless and vast,
In thousand forms of crescents, circles, cast,
Gold glitters; spangling all the wide extent,
And flashes back to Heaven the rays it sent.
Gardens and domes--bazars, begem the woods--
Seraglio, harems, peopled solitudes,
Where the veil'd idol kneels; and vistas through
Barr'd lattices, that give th' enamoured view;
Flowers, orange-trees--and waters sparkling near.
And black and lovely eyes, alas! that fear
At those heaven-gates dark sentinels should stand
To scare even fancy from her promised land."[20]
I long'd to see the isles that gem
Old Ocean's purple diadem.
I sought by turns--and saw them.

The Seraglio and its dark groves; the gilded domes and their snowy,
arrow-like minarets; the Seven Towers, with their fancy-pictured
terrors, fade gradually from my sight, as the steam-boat rapidly ploughs
the glassy wave. The eye, straining itself for a last glimpse of the
beautiful city, beholds it resting, like a phantom, on the indistinct
verge where heaven and the waters meet, until it sinks into the bosom of
the unruffled ocean.

[Sidenote: MY FELLOW PASSENGERS.] What a motley crew! A royal prince;
Spanish nobles; Italian counts; French marquises; Dutch chevaliers; and,
I may proudly add, English gentlemen. We had also a quack doctor from
Paris; a gaming-house-keeper from Milan; a clergyman, poor as an
Apostle, from Iceland; a grim-looking student from the University of
Goettingen; a Danish baro