Transports of Delight: An Aromatic Journey in Verse From East to West on the Wings of Perfume

Description

This book is a feast for the nose! Transports of Delight is a celebration through verse of man’s extraordinary sensory world of smell, connecting East and West. Here is a fascinating and delightful anthology, drawn from around the world and across the millennia, capturing a kaleidoscope of emotions, moods and memories, all of which are energized and enhanced by smells of every kind – ‘smells which match our moods, promote our passions, provoke a sense of awe in the natural world around us, and bring us closer to our gods’. The anthology, containing over a hundred poems and excerpts from literature including The Teachings of the Buddha and Ben Johnson’s intoxicating ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes’ (Ode to Celia), takes the reader from Japan to China, Tibet and the East Indies, on to India and the Levant, then to Europe and finally to the Americas. Transports of Delight will certainly help transport and delight the reader to another level of sensory pleasure – far removed from today’s audio-visual world of ipods, televisions, CDs and DVDs! Transports of Delight Contents Acknowledgements The Ballad of East and West Prologue Scent JAPAN Fragrance of the Orange Once there was a Man 10 Uses of Koh (Incense) Brought by the Breeze An Ephemeral Spring Dream In the Moonlight Flowers of Hill or Dale When the East Wind Blows After Bells had Rung From Memoirs of a Geisha From The Musmee From The Buddha at Kamakura CHINA, TIBETANDEAST INDIES When Two People are at One Xanadu The Glories of Kinsay (Hangchow) The Scent of Autumn Hymn to Incense The Widow’s Tale From Lord Jim Burning Incense INDIAANDTHE LEVANT Soft as a Bud When We Have Loved In the Month of Vaishaka* The Prophet Awake, O Heart Song of Arabian Camel Drovers The Capture of a Rose by Distillation From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Gulistan (Garden of a Rose) Sinbad’s Other Tale Incantation Take Unto Thee Sweet Spices The Smell of Lebanon From The Gardener EUROPE Here First She Bathes When I Drink Wine The Histories Phoenix You Will Dine Well, Dear Fabullus My Boy’s Kisses Poetry is Hard The Smell of Gum Chypre (Cyprus) The Ordinall Of Alchemy Secret of the Philosophers Sonnet 54 Coming To Kiss Her Lips A Fragrante Prayer To the Most Fair and LovelyMistress Anne Soame Upon Julia’s Unlacing Herself Ask Me No More From Rhodon and Iris A Nosegay for Laura Edict of George III,King of England Cologne The Wallflower From Ode to a Nightingale From The Sensitive Plant Le Parfum Awakenings Love and Sleep Perfume Memory White Heliotrope Odour Eros D’aute Hothouse Flowers From The Picture of Dorian Gray A Lure The Connoisseur of Woodsmoke Ithaka Sent THE AMERICAS To Celia From Bermudas Meditation 9 From The song of Hiawatha To Helen Smoke Ambergris From Waikiki The Flower-fed Buffaloes The Earth is Precious Roots and Leaves The Sign E P I L O G U E Earth Scent Glossary Bibliography The Harvey Crest