The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala by Henry Baerlein
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page 3 of 57 (05%)
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Your face is held sideways with what is called, I believe, a
quizzical expression. "Morocco," says she, "viewed from the banks of the Seine, is becoming more and more like the Serbonian Bog." Then she waits, discreet as always, while you think. Miss Fox, his thoughts are on the Adriatic! There his boat, eleven years ago, was sailing underneath a net of stars and he was talking to a fellow-traveller. They had been joined at first by common suffering,--and how shall mortals find a stronger link? On board that boat there was an elderly American, the widow of a senator's brother-in-law, whose mission was, she took it, to convert those two. What specially attracted her to them was not, perhaps, that they excelled the other passengers in luridness, but that they had the privilege of understanding, more or less, her language. "Feci quod potui," said Dr. Dillon, "faciant meliora potentes." She said, and let us hope with truth, that recently a Chinaman, another object of her ministrations, had addressed her as "Your honour, the foreign devil." And this caused her to discuss the details of our final journey--in the meantime we have taken many others of a more delightful sort--and she assured us that we should be joined by Chinamen and all those Easterners. She had extremely little hope for any of them, and Abu'l-Ala, the Syrian poet, whom Dr. Dillon had been putting into English prose,-- Abu'l-Ala she steadily refused to read. Nor did the prospect of beholding him in English verse evoke a sign of joy upon her |
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