Light silken curtain, colorless and soft, 
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides 
                 Behind thy pearly veil’s
                 Opaque, mysterious woof? 
 
Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch daylong 
Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads, 
                Nigh me I still can mark 
                Cool fields of beaded grass. 
 
No more; for on the rim of the globed world 
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness. 
                But songs of unseen birds 
                And tranquil roll of waves 
 
Bring sweet assurance of continuous life 
Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams, 
                Of tissue subtler still 
                Than the wreathed fog, arise, 
 
And cheat my brain with airy vanishings 
And mystic glories of the world beyond. 
                A whole enchanted town 
                Thy baffling folds conceal—
 
An orient town, with slender-steepled mosques, 
Turret from turret springing, dome from dome, 
                Fretted with burning stones, 
                And trellised with red gold. 
 
Through spacious streets, where running waters  flow, 
Sun-screened by fruit-trees and the  broad-leaved palm, 
                Past the gay-decked bazaars, 
                Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men. 
 
Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues, 
While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares. 
                The sultry air is spiced
                With fragrance of rich gums, 
 
And through the lattice high in yon dead wall, 
See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face, 
                Flushed like a musky peach, 
                Peers down upon the mart! 
 
From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head 
She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil:
                ’Midst the blank blackness there 
                She blossoms like a rose. 
 
Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes, 
And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam? 
                Behold her smile on me 
                With honeyed, scarlet lips! 
 
Divine Scheherazade! I am thine. 
I come! I come!—Hark! from some far-off mosque
                The shrill muezzin calls 
                The hour of silent prayer, 
 
And from the lattice he hath scared by love. 
The lattice vanisheth itself—the street,
               The mart, the Orient town;
                Only through still, soft air 
 
That cry is yet prolonged. I wake to hear
The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes 
                Stands the white wall of mist, 
                Blending with vaporous skies. 
 
Elusive gossamer, impervious 
Even to the mighty sun-god’s keen red shafts! 
                With what a jealous art 
                Thy secret thou dost guard!
 
Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds, 
Within an opal hollow, there abides 
                The lady of the mist, 
                The Undine of the air—
 
A slender, winged, ethereal, lily form, 
Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair, 
                In waving raiment swathed
                Of changing, irised hues. 
 
Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed 
The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows:
                Into each flower-cup 
                Her cool dews she distills. 
 
She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks,
She knows the green soft hollows of their sides, 
                And unafraid she floats 
                O’er the vast-circled seas. 
 
She loves to bask within the moon’s wan beams, 
Lying, night-long, upon the moist, dark earth, 
                And leave her seeded pearls 
                With morning on the grass. 
 
Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts
Of her fantastic palace I might pass, 
                And reach the inmost shrine 
                Of her chaste solitude,
 
And feel her cool and dewy fingers press 
My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart
                She poured with tender love 
                Her healing Lethe-balm! 
 
See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves! 
Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams 
                Upon a newborn world and laughing summer seas. 
                And laughing summer seas. 
 
Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance 
Through crystal air. On the horizon’s marge, 
                Like a huge purple wraith, 
         The dusky fog retreats.

Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations.

To read more poems, click here.

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