Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
American literature
Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,
And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow
Of a love that shall not die
_Till the sun grows cold,_
_And the stars are old,_
_And the leaves of the Judgment_
_Book unfold!_
My steps are nightly driven,
By the fever in my breast,
To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
_Till the sun grows cold,_
_And the stars are old,_
_And the leaves of the Judgment_
_Book unfold!_
* * * * *
THE ARAB TO THE PALM.
NEXT to thee, O fair gazelle,
O Beddowee girl, beloved so well;
Next to the fearless Nedjidee,
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee;
Next to ye both I love the Palm,
With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm;
Next to ye both I love the Tree
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three
With love, and silence, and mystery!
Our tribe is many, our poets vie
With any under the Arab sky;
Yet none can sing of the Palm but I.
The marble minarets that begem
Cairo’s citadel-diadem
Are not so light as his slender stem.
He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam’s glance
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance――
A slumberous motion, a passionate sign,
That works in the cells of the blood like wine.
Full of passion and sorrow is he,
Dreaming where the beloved may be.
And when the warm south-winds arise,
He breathes his longing in fervid sighs――
Quickening odors, kisses of balm,
That drop in the lap of his chosen palm.
The sun may flame and the sands may stir,
But the breath of his passion reaches her.
O Tree of Love, by that love of thine,
Teach me how I shall soften mine!
Give me the secret of the sun,
Whereby the wooed is ever won!
If I were a King, O stately Tree,
A likeness, glorious as might be,
In the court of my palace I’d build for thee!
With a shaft of silver, burnished bright,
And leaves of beryl and malachite.
With spikes of golden bloom a-blaze,
And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase:
And there the poets, in thy praise,
Should night and morning frame new lays――
New measures sung to tunes divine;
But none, O Palm, should equal mine!
* * * * *
LIFE ON THE NILE.
――――“The life thou seek’st
Thou’lt find beside the eternal Nile.”
――_Moore’s Alciphron._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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