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Poems Real and Ideal

By George Barlow

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SONNET XIX. AN EASTERN YEARNING.
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62

SONNET XIX. AN EASTERN YEARNING.

Oh, be thou just a rose! Why, thou canst kiss,
And is not that enough? This weary “soul”
That women cultivate, what heaven, what goal,
Can it supply as sweet as passion's bliss!
Half the delights of womanhood we miss
Here in the West.—Woman and flowers are one.
Instruct your flower:—flower-rapture all is done
Straightway, and you forget what woman is.
Oh, God deliver me from Western dreams
Of culture! Give me just an Arab tent,
And sweetly-moulded limbs within it pent,
And sun and flowers, and stars, and pale moon-beams:
This dark slave's shining bosom o'er me bent,
In that she cannot spell, more shapely seems.