In an Egyptian Garden
Can it be winter otherwhere?
Forsooth, it seems not so!
The moonlight on the garden square
Must be the only snow,
For all about me, fragrant fair,
The blooms of summer blow.
Wine-lipped and beautiful and bland,
The rose displays its dower;
The heavy-scented citron and
The stainless lily-tower;
And whiter than a houri’s hand,
El Ful, the Arab flower.
In purple silhouette a palm
Lifts from a vine-wreathed plinth
Against a sky whose cloudless calm
Is hued like hyacinth;
And echoes with a bulbul’s psalm
The jasmine labyrinth.
In life’s tumultuous ocean swell
Here is a charmèd isle;
I hear a late muezzin tell
His holy tale the while,
And like the faint notes of a bell
The boat-songs of old Nile.
Across my spirit thrills no theme
That is not marvel-bright;
I see within the lotus gleam
The nectar of delight,
And, tasting it, I drift and dream
Adown the glamoured night!
Clinton Scollard