_(From the French of Lebrun.)_
Queen of the Morn! Sultana of the East!
City of wonders, on whose sparkling breast,
Fair, slight, and tall, a thousand palaces
Fling their gay shadows over golden seas!
Where towers and domes bestud the gorgeous land,
And countless masts, a mimic forest stand;
Where cypress shades the minaret's snowy hue,
And gleams of gold dissolve in skies of blue,
Daughter of Eastern art, the most divine--
Lovely, yet faithless bride of Constantine--
Fair Istamboul, whose tranquil mirror flings
Back with delight thy thousand colourings,
And who no equal in the world dost know,
Save thy own image pictured thus below!
Dazzled, amazed, our eyes half-blinded, fail,
While sweeps the phantasm past our gliding sail--
Like as in festive scene, some sudden light
Rises in clouds of stars upon the night.
Struck by a splendour never seen before,
Drunk with the perfumes wafted from the shore,
Approaching near these peopled groves, we deem
That from enchantment rose the gorgeous dream,
Day without voice, and motion without sound,
Silently beautiful! The haunted ground
Is paved with roofs beyond the bounds of sight,
Countless, and coloured, wrapped in golden light.
'Mid groves of cypress, measureless and vast,
In thousand forms of circles--crescents--cast,
Gold glitters, spangling all the wide extent,
And flashes back to heaven the rays it sent.
Gardens and domes, bazaars begem the woods;
Seraglios, harems--peopled solitudes,
Where the veil'd idol kneels; and vistas, through
Barr'd lattices, that give the enamoured view,
Flowers, orange-trees, and waters sparkling near,
And black and lovely eyes,--Alas, that Fear,
At those heaven-gates, dark sentinel should stand,
To scare even Fancy from her promised land!
_Foreign Quar. Rev._
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