The rose, the lute, and the nightingale,
From flow'rs, whose odours were _too_ divine;
From gems of beauty whose souls were mine;
From floating eyes, that could wound, yet bless,
In their warm, dark, deep, voluptuousness;
I'm come, in young iv'ry breasts to lie,
Betray'd like Love, by my luscious sigh!

I'm come, and my holy, rich, perfume
Makes faint your roses of palest bloom;
Soul, as _I_ am, of an orient gem,
My aroma's too divine for them;
I'm come! but mine odorous, elfin wing
Rises from earth, and that one fair thing
_First_ Love's _first_ sigh, which ye know to be,
More exquisite, and more brief than _me_!

M.L.B.


[1] Having, not long since, purchased a bottle of Persian Otto, warranted
_genuine_, (as is all) I laid it carefully by, wrapped thickly round
with cotton wool; the Atar which was certainly excellent, was in a
curious bottle of rough misshapen workmanship, but ornamented with
sundry circles, and lozenges, of various coloured glass. I was
inclined to regard this bottle as a more genuine specimen of oriental
art, than one of those, which, enamelled, with gold, stands forth in
its way an _elegant_ of the first water, and I hoped to have kept it
long. On visiting my Otto shortly afterwards, I found that not only
had it all evaporated, but destroyed its receptacle. Its strength (I