3. Your eyes are black and lovely,
    But wild and disdainful as those of a stag.

STANZA III

1. The wretched IBRAHIM sighs in these verses: 
    One dart from your eyes has pierc’d thro’ my heart.

2. Ah! when will the hour of possession arrive? 
    Must I yet wait a long time? 
    The sweetness of your charms has ravished my soul.

3. Ah! SULTANA! stag-ey’d—­an angel amongst angels! 
    I desire,—­and, my desire remains unsatisfied.—­Can
    you take delight to prey upon my heart?

STANZA IV

1. My cries pierce the heavens! 
    My eyes are without sleep! 
    Turn to me, SULTANA—­let me gaze on thy beauty.

2. Adieu—­I go down to the grave. 
    If you call me—­I return. 
    My heart is—­hot as sulphur;—­sigh, and it will flame.

3. Crown of my life! fair light of my eyes! 
    My SULTANA! my princess! 
    I rub my face against the earth; I am drown’d in scalding tears—­
    I rave! 
    Have you no compassion?  Will you not turn to look upon me?

I have taken abundance of pains to get these verses in a literal translation; and if you were acquainted with my interpreters, I might spare myself the trouble of assuring you, that they have received no poetical touches from their hands.  In my opinion (allowing for the inevitable faults of a prose translation into a language so very different) there is a good deal of beauty in them.  The epithet of stag-ey’d (though the sound is not very agreeable in English) pleases me extremely; and I think it a very lively image of the fire and indifference in his mistress’s eyes.—­Monsieur Boileau has very justly observed, that we are never to judge of the elevation of an expression in an ancient author, by the sound it carries with us; since it may be extremely fine with them, when, at the same time, it appears low or uncouth to us.  You are so well acquainted with Homer, you cannot but have observed the same thing, and you must have the same indulgence for all Oriental poetry.  The repetitions at the end of the two first stanzas are meant for a sort of chorus, and are agreeable to the ancient manner of writing.  The music of the verses apparently changes in the third stanza, where the burden is altered; and I think he very artfully, seems more passionate at the conclusion, as ’tis natural for people to warm themselves by their own discourse, especially on a subject in which one is deeply concerned; ’tis certainly far more touching than our modern custom of concluding a song of passion with a turn which is inconsistent with it.  The first verse is a description of the season of the year; all the country now being full of nightingales, whole amours with roses, is an Arabian fable, as well known here as any part of Ovid amongst us, and is much the same as if an English poem should begin, by saying,—­“Now Philomela sings.”  Or what if I turned the whole into the style of English poetry, to see how it would look?