DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63447#0109
ARABIAN CIVILIZATION.
93
the whole scene was one never equalled in gorgeous, and
yet subdued sublimity ; fitting the spirit of the worshipper
to a silent awe on crossing the portals of gilded and carved
cedar.
Sacked and plundered of its vast treasures, desecrated
and defiled, the church of Saint Sophia stands even now
as one of the finest edifices in the world.
Thus stood Constantinople, and such were its inhabit-
ants, at the time of our present narrative.
Part II.
Abandoning the Eastern Empire and its capital, we must
now turn to still more Oriental regions, where the won-
drous sights that greet the eye seem to mock the
imaginations of the poets of a colder sky; and where
the tide of life, ever bright with the hues of love and
youth, contributed in after times to irrigate our own
fields of thought.
The brilliant and fanciful civilization of the Arabians
differed in every respect from any of which records exist.
Although the graver and exact sciences reached to a high
proficiency among the Arabs, as we shall afterwards have
occasion to see, the prevailing tone of life, manners, and
literature was a fervid and graceful realism, which found
a natural expression in the pathetic and tender tales
and lays still extant; in the bewitching caprices of a
fantastic architecture (borrowed originally from Byzan-
tium and still more ancient rudiments), in pure and
abundant fountains; and in the songs of birds, the fra-
grance of flowers, and the perfumes lavished by even
the deserts, from balsams denied to other climes.
The passion which inspires first all poetry and all
fiction, but which becomes in Northern nations a spiritual
tormentor, is constantly found in Arabian and Persian
literature, as the all-engrossing occupation of youth, to
the exclusion of any sterner or more grave pursuit. We
seem to behold the lovely forms, the lustrous eyes, the
frank, spontaneous emotions of the youthful heart. Byron
93
the whole scene was one never equalled in gorgeous, and
yet subdued sublimity ; fitting the spirit of the worshipper
to a silent awe on crossing the portals of gilded and carved
cedar.
Sacked and plundered of its vast treasures, desecrated
and defiled, the church of Saint Sophia stands even now
as one of the finest edifices in the world.
Thus stood Constantinople, and such were its inhabit-
ants, at the time of our present narrative.
Part II.
Abandoning the Eastern Empire and its capital, we must
now turn to still more Oriental regions, where the won-
drous sights that greet the eye seem to mock the
imaginations of the poets of a colder sky; and where
the tide of life, ever bright with the hues of love and
youth, contributed in after times to irrigate our own
fields of thought.
The brilliant and fanciful civilization of the Arabians
differed in every respect from any of which records exist.
Although the graver and exact sciences reached to a high
proficiency among the Arabs, as we shall afterwards have
occasion to see, the prevailing tone of life, manners, and
literature was a fervid and graceful realism, which found
a natural expression in the pathetic and tender tales
and lays still extant; in the bewitching caprices of a
fantastic architecture (borrowed originally from Byzan-
tium and still more ancient rudiments), in pure and
abundant fountains; and in the songs of birds, the fra-
grance of flowers, and the perfumes lavished by even
the deserts, from balsams denied to other climes.
The passion which inspires first all poetry and all
fiction, but which becomes in Northern nations a spiritual
tormentor, is constantly found in Arabian and Persian
literature, as the all-engrossing occupation of youth, to
the exclusion of any sterner or more grave pursuit. We
seem to behold the lovely forms, the lustrous eyes, the
frank, spontaneous emotions of the youthful heart. Byron