Classic Poem

His search was hopeless, and he gave up hope;
And yet would linger there. He left the slope,
And wandered through the rose and tulip vale.
The Houri garden, where ev'n noon look'd pale,
But lovelier far; as woman, when she hears
The name that thrills her heart, and smiles through tears.
And now he stood within the central shrine,
The canopy of peach and nectarine;
The Harem bower; and though, in days gone by,
To look upon its treasures was to die,
Yet many a noble by the cypress wall
Linger'd to hear their twilight music's fall:
For, mingled with the perfumed air, would rise
The rich theorb's, the cittern's melodies,
And, in their pause, some song's soul-touching flow,
Telling that even within that bower was woe.