s heart._

And had we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid,
We had loved, as the story says,
Did the Sultan's favorite one
And the Persian Emperor's son
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.

Do you know the story well
Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana?--
When night on the palace fell,
A slave through a secret door,
Low-arched on the Tigris' shore,
By a hidden winding stair
Ben Bekkar brought to his fair?

Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of marvellous worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
And the curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.

Ten slave-girls--so many blooms--
Stand sconcing tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each like to a star in the East;
Ten singers, their lutes a-tune,
Each like to a bosomed moon.

For her in the stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled,
No metaphor made may serve;
Scarved deep with her own dark hair,
The jewels like fire-flies there--
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.

The zone embracing her waist,--
The ransom of forty princes,--
But her form more priceless is placed;
Carbuncles of Istakhar
In her coronet burning are--
Though gems of the Jamshid race,
Far rarer the gem of her face.

Tall-shaped like the letter I,
With a face like an Orient morning;
Eyes of the bronze-black sky;
Lips, of the pomegranate split,
With the light of her language lit;
Cheeks, which the young blood dares
Make blood-red anemone lairs.

Kohled with voluptuous look,
From opaline casting-bottles,
Handmaidens over them shook
Rose-water, and strewed with bloom
Mosaics old of the room;
Torch-rays on the walls made bars,
Or minted down golden dinars.

Roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara;--
Not a spray of cypress sad;--
Narcissus and jessamine o'er
Carved pillar and cedarn door;
Pomegranates and bells of clear
Tulips of far Kashmeer.

And the chamber glows like a flower
Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa;
And the bronzen censers glower;
And scents of ambergris pour
With myrrh brought out