Explore "Queen Oriana's Dream" by Charles Lamb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On a bank with roses shaded, / Whose sweet scent the violets aided / Violets whose breath alone / Yields but feeble smell or none, / (Sweeter bed Jove ne'er reposed on / When his eyes Olympus closed on,) / While o'erhead six slaves did hold / Canopy of cloth o' gold, / And two more did music keep / Which might Juno lull to sleep, / Oriana who was queen / To the mighty Tamerlane, / That was lord of all the land / Between Thrace and Samarcand, / While the noon-tide fervour beam'd, / Mus'd herself to sleep, and _dream'd_.
Thus far, in magnific strain, / A young poet soothed his vein, / But he had nor prose nor numbers / To express a princess' slumbers. -- / Youthful Richard had strange fancies, / Was deep versed in old romances, / And could talk whole hours upon / The great Cham and Prester John, -- / Tell the field in which the Sophi / From the Tartar won a trophy -- / What he read with such delight of / Thought he could as easily write of; / But his over-young invention / Kept not pace with brave intention.