1. What drew you here this morn to trace and write
Of a land whose dwellers perished overnight?

2. The abode exchanged, after live's easy hours,
A dusty waste for verdant bowers.

3. I halted there and to the company cried:
"Turn your beasts aside!" But every tribe

4. Replied: "Dispose your load this day some other way.
Not thus shall we relieve your disarray."

5. Nothing, I thought, would lighten the pack I bear
Save the good help of friends - but none was there.

6. If they who dwelt in that fair place we spied
Lived all securely, from alarms set free,

7. Then I have seen, amid their castle wide,
A maidens' bower, inmates fair as she.

8. There, linked with loveliness from head to feet,
Proudly they trod, like graceful gazelles ye meet.

9. There I sojourned awhile, and spent the light
In converse glad, forgetting coming night.

10. We shunned the eyes of censurers prowling nigh,
Hid by the screen of tent-walls raised on high;

11. With backs close mantled in our robes' thick down,
Between our wrists and shoulders wrapt and brown.

12. I slept in ease, my pillowed cheek sustained
In night's dark hours by wrist and bracelet chained -

13. Till morning glimmered and the dawn's faint rays
Speared through its chinks like schoolboys at their plays.

14. Then we arose and walked in the cool air,
With scented herbs our fevered limbs to spare,

15. While all around on hill and plain Its herds
The rising sun greeted, like angels' words.

16. With us there fared gazelles, gentle and young,
Hastening like maidens clad in garments long.

17. With breasts adorned they paced sedately by,
Their horns the rising day-star's brilliancy.