When William Allingham wrote: "Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so
weighty and so fine," he followed in the wake of a hundred poets, who
had made a girl's tresses the object of amorous hyperbole. Dianeme's
"rich hair which wantons with the love-sick air" is a pretty conceit.
The fanciful notion that a beautiful woman imparts her sweetness to
the air, especially with the fragrance of her hair, occurs frequently
in the poems of Hafiz and other Orientals. In one of these the poet
chides the zephyr for having stolen its sweetness while playing with
the beloved's loose tresses. In another, a youth declares that if he
should die and the fragrance of his beloved's locks were wafted over
his grave, it would bring him back to life. Ben Jonson's famous lines
to Celia:
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon did'st only breathe
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee!
are a free imitation of passages in the Love Letters (Nos. 30 and 31)
of the Greek Philostratus: "Send me back some of the roses on which
you slept. Their natural fragrance will have been increased by that
which you imparted to them." This is a great improvement on the
Persian poets who go into raptures over the fragrant locks of fair
women, not for their inherent sweetness, however, but for the
artificial perfumes used by them, including the disgusting musk! "Is a
caravan laden with musk returning from Khoten?" sings one of these
bards in describing the approach of his mistress.