Safar Nameh

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 28] IN PRAISE OF GARDENS There is a couplet in an Elizabethan book of airs which might serve as a motto for Eastern life: ' Thy love is not thy love, ' says the author of the songs in the ' Muses' Garden of Delights ' (and the pretty stilted title suits the somewhat antiquated ring of the lines): ' Thy...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 28] IN PRAISE OF GARDENS There is a couplet in an Elizabethan book of airs which might serve as a motto for Eastern life: ' Thy love is not thy love, ' says the author of the songs in the ' Muses' Garden of Delights ' (and the pretty stilted title suits the somewhat antiquated ring of the lines): ' Thy love is not thy love if not thine own, And so it is not, if it once be known.' If it once be known Ah yes the whole charm of possession vanishes before the gaze of curious eyes, and for them, too, charm is driven away by familiarity. It takes the mystery of a Sphinx to keep the worldgazing for thirty centuries. The East is full of secrets?no one understands their value better than the Oriental; and because she is full of secrets she is full of entrancing surprises. Many fine things there are upon the surface: brilliance of colour, splendour of light, solemn loneliness, clamorous activity; these are only the patterns upon the curtain which floats for ever before the recesses of Eastern life, its essential charm is of more subtle quality. As it listeth, it comes and goes; it flashes upon you through the open doorway of some blank, windowless house you pass in the street, from under the lifted veil of the beggar woman who lays her hand on your bridle, from the dark, contemptuous eyes of a child; then the East sweeps aside her curtains, flashes a facet of her jewels into your dazzled eyes, and disappears again with a mocking little laugh at your bewilderment; then for a moment it seems to you that youare looking her in the face, but while you are wondering whether she be angel or devil, she is gone. She will not stay?she prefers the unexpected; she will keep her secrets and her tantalizing charm with them, and when you think you have caught at last some of her...