Explore "Preface" by Théophile Gautier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When empires lay riven apart, / Fared Goethe at battle time's thunder / To fragrant oases of art, / To weave his _Divan_ into wonder.
Leaving Shakespeare, he pondered the note / Of Nisami, and heard in his leisure / The hoopoe's weird monody float, / And set it to soft Orient measure.
As Goethe at Weimar delayed / And dreamed in the fair garden closes, / And, questing in sun or in shade, / With Hafiz plucked redolent roses, --
I, closed from the tempest that shook / My window with fury impassioned, / Sat dreaming, and, safe in my nook, / Enamels and Cameos fashioned.