The good Tommy Moore did not know this, but, letting his warm Irish
imagination run riot through a mixed bag of Eastern romancists and their
works, he evolved, amid a _pot pourri_ of impossibilities, an impossible
damsel as unlike anything to be found in these parts as the celebrated
elephant evolved from his inner consciousness by the German professor!
As I traversed the main, or rolled by train,
From my Western habitation,
I frequently thought--perhaps more than I ought--
Upon many a quiet occasion
Of the elegant forms and manifold charms
Of the beautiful female Asian.
For the good Tommy Moore, in his pages of yore,
Sang as though he could never be weary
Of fair Nourmahal--an adorable "gal"--
And of Paradise and the Peri,
Until, I declare, I was wild to be where
I might gaze on the lovely Kashmiri.
Through the hot plains of Ind I fled like the wind,
Unenchanted by mistress or ayah,
The dusky Hindu, I soon saw, wouldn't do,
So I paused not, until in the sky----Ah!--
Far upward arose the perpetual snows
And the peaks of the proud Himalaya.
But in Kashmir, alas! I found not a lass
Who answered to Tommy's description--
For the make of such maid I am sadly afraid
The fond parents have lost the prescription,
And I murmured; "No doubt, the old breed has died out,
At least such is my honest conviction."
In the horrible slums which form the foul homes
Of the rag-covered dames of the city,
I saw wrinkled hags, all wrapped in old rags,
Whose appearance excited but pity.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121