Enamels and Cameos and other Poems

This book is a collection of short poems written by Theophile Gautier . 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.