THE ODALISQUE.
Reading edition
———
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
———
In marble shells the fountain splashes;
Its falling spray is turned to stars,
When some light wind its pinion dashes
Against thy gilded lattice-bars.
Around the shafts, in breathing cluster,
The roses of Damascus run,
And through the summer’s moons of lustre
The tulip’s goblet drinks the sun.
The day, through shadowy arches fainting,
Reveals the garden’s burst of bloom,
With lights of shifting iris painting
The jasper pavement of thy room:
Enroofed with palm and laurel bowers,
Thou see’st, beyond, the cool kiosk,
And far away, the penciled towers
That shoot from many a stately mosque.
The voice of bird and tinkling water
Sounds cheerly in the cloudless morn,
That comes to thee, its radiant daughter,
Across the glittering Golden Horn;
And like the wave, whose flood of brightness
Is seen alone by eyes on shore,
Thy sunlit being moves in lightness
Nor knows the beauty all adore.
Thou hast no world beyond the chamber
Whose inlaid marbles mock the flowers,
Where burns thy lord’s chiboque of amber,
To charm the languid evening hours.
There sounds, for thee, the fond lute’s yearning
Through all enchanted tales of old,
And spicy cressets, dimly burning,
Swing on their chains of Persian gold.
No more, in half-remembered vision,
Thy distant childhood comes to view;
That star-like world of shapes Elysian
Has faded from thy morning’s blue:
The eastern winds that cross the Taurus
Have now no voice of home beyond,
Where light waves foam in endless chorus
Against the walls of Trebizond.
For thee the Past may never reckon
Its hoard of saddening memories o’er,
Nor voices from the Future beckon
To joys that only live in store.
Thy life is in the gorgeous Present,
An orient summer, warm and bright;—
No gleam of beauty evanescent,
But one long time of deep delight.