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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  To a Persian Boy

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.

Asia Minor: Smyrna

To a Persian Boy

By Bayard Taylor (1825–1878)

In the Bazaar at Smyrna

THE GORGEOUS blossoms of that magic tree

Beneath whose shade I sat a thousand nights

Breathed from their opening petals all delights

Embalmed in spice of Orient Poesy,

When first, young Persian, I beheld thine eyes,

And felt the wonder of thy beauty grow

Within my brain, as some fair planet’s glow

Deepens, and fills the summer evening skies.

From under thy dark lashes shone on me

The rich, voluptuous soul of Eastern land,

Impassioned, tender, calm, serenely sad,—

Such as immortal Hafiz felt when he

Sang by the fountain-streams of Rocnabad,

Or in the bowers of blissful Samarcand.