Notes

1] This poem first appeared in the volume of 1830, and has only undergone slight alterations in text. It paints a series of pictures, charming from their sensuous beauty, which are suggested to Tennyson's imagination by reminiscences of the "Arabian Nights", more particularly of one of the stories, that of "Nur Al-Din Ali and the Damsel Anis al Jalis", especially of that part of the story narrated on the Thirty-sixth Night. The varying arrangement of the rhymes in the several stanzas should be noted.

7] Bagdat. A city situated on both banks of the Tigris, some 500 miles from its mouth.
fretted. See note on Gray's "Elegy", 1. 39.

9] sworn. 'Close' or 'firm', cf. the expression "sworn friends".

11] Haroun, surnamed Al-Raschid ('the orthodox'), flourished 786-809 A.D., caliph of Bagdat, famed for his bravery and magnificence, and for his patronage of literature and art.

15] citron-shadows. Citron is applied to lemon-trees and allied species.

23] clear-stemm'd platans. Oriental plane-trees which run up smoothly for some height before sending out their wide-spreading branches.

47] rivage. Bank; "Faerie Queene", IV.6.20:
"The which Pactolus with his waters shere
Throws forth upon the rivage round about him near."

58] engrain'd. Properly 'dyed in fast colours'; the poet seems still to have the idea of a woven fabric in his mind, as at line 28.

64] With disks and tiars. "Disks" suggests round, flattish blossoms, "tiars" more elongated and convex forms. "Tiara" is properly an eastern hat, and is naturally suggested by the locality of the poem. For the poetical form "tiar," cf. "Par. Lost", iii, 625.

70] bulbul. The Persian name for nightingale.

76] flattering. 'Lending a lustre to', cf. "Aylmer's Field": "A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs", and Shakespeare, "Sonnet", 33: "Full many a glorious morning have I seen / Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye."

81] A sudden splendour. The light from the Pavilion of the Caliphat (see 1. 114).

101] pleasance. Archaic and poetical for 'pleasure'. Cf. the following passage from the original story in the "Arabian Nights": "Now this garden was named the Garden of Gladness and therein stood a belvedere hight the Palace of Pleasure."

106] rosaries. In the sense of the Latin original (rosarium), 'gardens or beds, of roses'.

114] Caliphat (usually "Caliphate") the dominion of the Caliphs, or successors of Mahomet.

123] quintessence. The stress is usually upon the second syllable, but the pronunciation which the metre here requires, is also admissible.

125] silvers. A bold use of the plural, meaning, of course, silver candlesticks.

127] mooned. 'Ornamented with crescents'--the symbol of Turkish dominion, hence an anachronism here.

135] argent-lidded. "Argent" refers to the colour; so in "Dream of Fair Women", l. 158: "the polish'd argent of her breast".

148] diaper'd. The word is applied to material covered with a regularly repeated pattern produced in the weaving without use of colour.

148-49] The lines seem to suggest that the cloth of gold had inwrought upon it garlands of flowers (as a border probably) and, besides that, a regularly repeated pattern (presumably in the main body of the cloth).

Other poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson