At this crisis, advancing with innumerable graces, engaging manners, friendly smiles, and affable looks, approached us a young bramin of such elegance of person, that the goddesses themselves wished to bow to the niche of the arch of his eyebrows, and the devotee longed to weave a zinnar for his heart from the amber-tinged ringlets of his locks. The bede chaunters* of the garden, enraptured at the sight of his cheeks, began the Zumzumma,* and the Sosun* with his ten tongues, captivated by his infidel (black) curls, sounded hymns in his praise.
Down his illumined aspect, ringlets entwined like serpents were enfolded, and from envy of his moon-fascinating countenance, the western sun sunk like an atom into dust. His fingers, in beauty and slenderness appearing as the Yed Bieza,* or like rays of the sun, being tinged with Hinna,* seemed branches of transparent red coral. His teeth, clear as pearl, from envy of which the pearl itself would fade in lustre, shone between his lips like the cluster of pleiades in the corruscations of the dawn of morning. Indications of genius blooming upon his aspect, glowed brightly as the tinge upon the rose; and the beams of good sense, from his expressive countenance, glanced like the rays of the sun. His stature was as a kindly shrub in the garden of beauty, and his appearance, as the moon at the fourteenth day, laved in the seven fountains of the sun.
His steps reminded you of the Tudderoo on the mountains; and when he stood, he cast an hundred thousand cords of the sense of inferiority on the untamed cypress.
At his approach our senses forsook us; and when he sat down, exclamations of surprize escaped us. My companions, till now busied in examining flowers and shrubs, broke their pens instantaneously over the names of the green-robed natives of the groves and elegantly-formed offspring of the garden. Their eyes, like the nergus, became stretched to the utmost in gazing at the roseate cheeks of this newly discovered shrub in the plantation of friendship; and they formed a circle around him, as the halo round the moon.
The silver-bodied youth of majestic deportment, now opening the source of the fountain of life, shed the heart-engaging pearls of clear-meaning eloquence over the garments of my assembled friends; and, after the manner of the skilled in learning and the versed in the mysteries of composition, delivered the following soul-attractive speech.
“To be thus captivated with the tints and odours of flowers and shrubs, and fascinated thus by the sight of a fair face and external beauty, is far from the rules of wisdom. The flower bloometh scarcely for a week, and borrowed charms can only endure for a short season. To pledge the heart, therefore, to one who knows not constancy, and to flatter the soul with the enjoyment of an object that cannot be permanent, true prudence will not sanction; nor will a sound judgment, penetrative into fallacies, approve.”
After this, having, in the language of Hindoostan, sketched the following heart-enticing history, (which may be stiled A newly-designed Garden of the Flowers of Rhetoric) on the tablet of narration; with such an eloquence, that you would have supposed he was pouring treasured pearls from a ruby casket, he thus addressed me:
“No garden can be more gratifying to the soul, nor any assemblage of flowers more fragrant to sensation, than this Ood* of Hindoostan sprinkled on the fire of the Parsee, in order that the scent of the lovers of eloquence may be refreshed by its odour, and the assembly of speech be filled with its fragrance. Doubtless, the destroying arm of autumn would never reach the flowers of such a beauteous garden, or the devastating blasts of winter make impression on the shrubs of such an elegant plantation.”
As these liberal remarks became impressed upon the pages of my mind, and the substance of his soul-refreshing eloquence was imprinted on the tablet of my heart—I, the humblest of the slaves of God, EINAIUT OOLLAH, a binder of the sheaves in the harvest of the masters of expression, and a grateful dependant on the service of the eminent for science and learning—from the hint of that full-orbed moon of the firmament of excellence—girded up the loins of attempt to collect the fresh flowers fallen from his garment, in order to enrich the garden of Persic diction.
The roseate colouring of epithets and accordant cadence of periods, I borrowed from the rose-like cheeks and cypress-formed stature of that elegantly proportioned model of exquisite sculpture. Chasteness of expression, and propriety of metaphor, I copied from the soft lip and heart-delighting form of that selection of the dewan of excellence.
Having given, with the attiring of the magic-empowered pen, new grace to the charmer of composition, I have introduced her (hoping for approval) into the assembly of appearance.
As parterre upon parterre of the Sooree and Sudberg of rhetoric, and of the Nussereen and Nusterrun of eloquent expression, blossom in this extensive garden, it is entitled, THE SPRING SEASON OF LEARNING.*
What a composition! It may be compared to a garden delighting the senses, and esteemed as a rose-plat refreshing to life. Every leaf of these pages of eloquence is a flower-bed; in every row of it clusters of the flowers of expression blooming. Every new figure in it is a rose-bush, under the shade of which the dark-veiled charmers of speech, like the flowery-vested brides of the garden, repose.