1 am came into my garden; that is, I al ready enjoy the pleasure of your company and conversation ; these are as grateful to my mind as delicious food could be to my palate; I could not drink wine and milk with greater satisfac tion; I am enjoying it. And you, my friends, partake the relish of those pleasures which you hear from the lips of my beloved, and of those elegances which you behold in her deportment and address." Tim FOURTH D. (t) The bride says ex plicitly that these occurrences happened in a dream, "I at once removes all ideas of indelicacy, as to the bridegroom's attempt to visit her, her going to the door, standing there, calling him, being found by the watchmen, beaten, wounded, etc. Moreover, she seems to have sup posed herself to be previously married, by men tioning her radid, or deep veil, which in reality, we presume, she had not yet worn, as the mar riage had not actually taken place; and, though betrothed, she probably did not wear it till the wedding. That the word heart in this passage means imagination, dreaming imagination, fancy, appears from Eccles. ii :23: "The days of labori ous man are sorrows ; his doing vexations, yea, even in the night time his heart does not rest;" he is still dreaming of, still engaged about the subject of his daily labors. This sense of the word heart is not uncommon in the Proverbs.
(2) The voice, that is. sound, of my beloved, knocking. For the same reasons for which we have rendered voice, music, in the SECOND DAY (2), we have rendered voice, sound, in this place; since the sound of a rapping against a door is not properly a voice, and since the word bears a more general sense than voice, restrictively.
(3) Lock. On the nature of the locks used in the East, Mr. Harmer has said something, and we mean to say more elsewhere, with a plate and explanation.
) Chamber of my heart. (See the article SitP.) (5) Standard of ten thousand—chief. say many —standard, say others—he for whom the stand ard is borne, say some, ohserving that the word has a passive import (the standard was a fiery beacon) ; he who carries this beacon—no, that is ton laborious—he for whom, in whose honor, to light whom, this standard is carried; he who shines, glitters, dazzles. by the light of it : and lastly conies the present elucidator—what for bids that this royal bridegroom should himself he the standard that leads, that precedes, that is followed by—imitated by—ten thousand? So Shakespeare describes Ilotspur : His honor stuck upon him, as the sun In the gray vault of heaven. and by his light Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts; he was indeed the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
Sn that, in speech, in gait, In diet, in affections of delight, In military rules, humors of blood, Ile was the mark and glass, copy and hook, That fashioned others ! And him —0 won drous him! 0, miracle of men ! (6) I !is eyes are like doves. Nothing can more
strikingly evince the necessity for acquaintance with the East, as well in its natural history as in other matters, than this passage. and the other passages in which eyes are compared to doves; our translators say "to the ryes of doves," which, as it may be understood to imply meekness, ten derness, etc., has usually passed without correc tion ; but the facts are (1) that our translators have added the word eyes; and (2) that they took black for white. They had in their minds the white pigeon, or at least the light-colored turtle dove; whereas the most common pigeon, or dove, in the East is the deep blue, or blue gray pigeon, whose brilliant plumage vibrates around his neck every sparkling hue, every daz zling flash of color ; and to this pigeon the com parison of the author refers. The deep blue pig eon, standing amid the foam of a water-fall, would be a blue center, surrounded by white space on each side of him, analogous to the iris of the eye, surrounded by the white of the eye. But as the foam of this water-fall is not brilliant enough to satisfy the poet. he has placed this deep blue pigeon in a pond of milk, or in a garden basin of milk, where, he says, he turns himself round, to parallel the dipping of the former verse; he wantons, sports, frisks; so sportive, rolling and glittering is the eye, the iris of my beloved. The milk, then, denotes the white of the eye, and the pigeon surrounded by it the iris ; that is, "the iris of his eye is like a deep blue pigeon, standing in the center of a pool of milk." The comparison is certainly extremely poetical and picturesque. Those who can make sense of our translation are extremely favored in point of ingenuity. This idea had not escaped the poets of 1 lindostan. for we have in the Gitagarinda the following passage: "The glances of her eyes played like a pair of water-birds of azure plumage, that sport near a full-blown lotus on a pool in the season of dew." The pools of Ileshbon afford a different comparison to the eyes of the bride ; dark, deep. and serene are her eyes ; so are those pools, dark. deep and serene—but were they also surrounded by a border of dark-colored marble, analogous to the border of stibium drawn along the eyelids of the spouse, and rendering them apparently larger, fuller. deeper? As this comparison is used where ornaments of dress are the particular subjects of consideration, we think it not impossible to be correct ; and certainly it is by no means contra dictory to the ideas contained in the simile re cently illn.trated. (See No. 9 in the FIFTH DAv.) For particulars of the dress, see the plates of dresses and their explanations, infra.