e most open and airy space. Some persons
there are, however, who have an antipathy to it, and others will, as
they inhale its delicious odour, fancy with myself, what may be.
THE SONG OF THE ATAR GUL!
I'm come! I'm come! for you've charm'd me here
_Soul of the Rose_, from divine Cashmire
I'm come,--all orient, odorous, rare,
An Eden-breath in your boreal air;
I'm come. I'm come! like a seraph's sigh
Breath'd to ethereal minstrelsy,
And well ye'll deem what a sigh must be
From the tearless heirs of eternity!
I've fled my bright frame from Tirnagh's stream,
And, wand'ring here, am sweet as the dream
Of passion, which stirs the Peri's breast,
Whom her dear one's winglets fan to rest;
I've dwelt i' the rose-cup, and drunk the tone--
Of my lover the Bulbul, all low and lone;
And the maid's soul-song, who forth hath crept,
When pale stars peer'd, and night flow'rs wept.
But oh! from the songs of Cashmire's vale,
The rose, the lute, and the nightingale,
From flow'rs, whose odours were _too_ divine;
From gems of beauty whose souls were mine;
From floating eyes, that could wound, yet bless,
In their warm, dark, deep, voluptuousness;
I'm come, in young iv'ry breasts to lie,
Betray'd like Love, by my luscious sigh!
I'm come, and my holy, rich, perfume
Makes faint your roses of palest bloom;
Soul, as _I_ am, of an orient gem,
My aroma's too divine for them;
I'm come! but mine odorous, elfin wing
Rises from earth, and that one fair thing
_First_ Love's _first_ sigh, which ye know to be,
More exquisite, and more brief than _me_!
M.L.B.
[1] Having, not long since, purchased a bottle of Persian Otto, warranted
_genuine_, (as is all) I laid it carefully by, wrapped thickly round
with cotton wool; the Atar which was certainly excellent, was in a
curious bottle of rough misshapen workmanship, but ornamented with
sundry circles, and lozenges, of various coloured glass. I was
inclined to regard this bottle as a more genuine specimen of oriental
art, than one of those, which, enamelled, with gold, stands forth in
its way an _elegant_ of the first water, and I hoped to have kept it
long. On visiting my Otto shortly afterwards, I found that not only
had it all evaporated, but destroyed its receptacle. Its strength (I
conclude) had dissolved the cement of the aforesaid coloured bits of
glass, and left me onl
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