Safar Nameh: Persian Pictures

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R. Bentley and son, 1894 - Iran - 294 pages
 

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Page 236 - Fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages ; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages: Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust ARV. Fear no more the frown o...
Page 121 - ... with unset stones — diamonds, sapphires, topazes, amethysts — the nectar of an Olympian god frozen in the cup. Under glass cases lay the diadems of former kings, high, closed helmets ablaze with precious stones ; masses of unstrung pearls ; costly and hideous toys, remarkable only for their extraordinary value — a globe, for instance, supported by an unbroken column of diamonds, whose seas were made of great flat emeralds, and whose continents of rubies and sapphires ; and scattered with...
Page 122 - Not white enough for pearls, and yet they could not be, though they looked suspiciously like — yes, they were! — they were pills! Yes, indeed they were pills — quack remedies which the Shah had collected on his Western travels, had brought home and placed among his treasures. After this discovery we were not surprised to find bottles of cheap scents and tooth-powder among the diamonds, nor to observe that some of the priceless cloisonne...
Page 90 - ... irresponsibility. Go where you will, the rocks will retain no impress of your footsteps ; dwell where you please, the mountains are your only witnesses, and they gaze with equal indifference on your presence and on your absence. But the fitfulness of human habitation among them, the absence of any effect to civilize them, to make them shelter man and minister to his wants, gives them an air of stubborn hopeless sterility, very imposing, very repelling. Gradually the loneliness will strike into...
Page 29 - ... tugged at the bit and set off at racing speed across the rain-softened ground. And we, too, passed out of the silence and remembered that we lived. Life seized us and inspired us with a mad sense of revelry. The humming wind and the teeming earth shouted ' Life ! life ! ' as we rode. Life ! life ! the bountiful. the magnificent ! Age was far from us — death far ; we had left him enthroned in his barren mountains, with ghostly cities and out-worn faiths to bear him company. For us the wide plain...
Page 20 - ... sight. With the impression of the deserted western roads still fresh in your memory, the appearance of the bazaars and of this eastern gate will fill you with surprise. Tehran, which from the west looked almost like a city of the dead, cut from all intercourse with the outer world, is alive after all and in eager relationship with a world of its own. Here in the dust and the sunshine is an epitome of the living East, and, standing unnoticed in such a doorway, you will admit that you have not...
Page 68 - ... suspiciously as though they had come from a Manchester loom, and if they had, they did not redound to the credit of Manchester taste ; the lamps smelt abominably of oil, the stifling air was loaded with dust, and the grating chant of the mollahs was as tedious as the noise of machinery. How long it lasted I do not know ; we were glad enough to escape from it after about an hour, and as we walked home through the cool village street, we shook a sense of chaotic confusion from our minds, and heard...
Page 196 - It summoned you forth to watch and to wonder, to listen to the §pft rush, of mountain streams and the whispering- of poplar leaves, to loiter through the vacant palace rooms where the moonbeams fell in patches from the latticed windows, to gaze down the terraced gardens bathed in the deceptive light which seemed to lay everything bare, and yet hid neglect and decay ; to strain your eyes towards the shimmering mud roofs on which the villagers snatched a broken rest, turning over with a sigh and a...
Page 119 - For what sober mortal could be prepared for the sight that burst upon us ? A great vaulted room with polished floor and painted walls, with deep alcoves through whose long narrow windows splashes of sunlight fell — and everywhere jewels ! Jewels on all the shelves of the alcoves, thick-sewn jewels on the carpets which hung against the walls, jewels coruscating from the throne at the top of the room, jewels in glass cases down the middle, flashing and sparkling in the sunlight, gleaming through...

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