In an Egyptian Garden

Can it be winter otherwhere? Forsooth, it seems not so! The moonlight on the garden square Must be the only snow, For all about me, fragrant fair, The blooms of summer blow.

Wine-lipped and beautiful and bland, The rose displays its dower; The heavy-scented citron and The stainless lily-tower; And whiter than a houri's hand, El Ful, the Arab flower.

In purple silhouette a palm Lifts from a vine-wreathed plinth Against a sky whose cloudless calm Is hued like hyacinth; And echoes with a bulbul's psalm The jasmine labyrinth.

In life's tumultuous ocean swell Here is a charmed isle; I hear a late muezzin tell His holy tale the while, And like the faint notes of a bell The boat-songs of old Nile.

Across my spirit thrills no theme That is not marvel-bright; I see within the lotus gleam The nectar of delight, And, tasting it, I drift and dream Adown the glamoured night!