Samarkand

The Golden Road to Samarkand ~ James Elroy Flecker

Samarkand or Samarqand (Uzbek and Tajik: Самарқанд; Persian: سمرقند) is a city in south-eastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia.

Quotes

• Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
  And bid these arms thy neck infold;
  That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
  Would give thy poet more delight
  Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold,
  Than all the gems of Samarcand.
  • Sir William Jones, "A Persian Song of Hafiz"
  • A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771)
  • Poems, consisting chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772)

• The almond groves of Samarcand,
    Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
  And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
    The grave white-turbaned merchants go;
  • Oscar Wilde, "Ave Imperatrix"

• ‘There’s a far-off scent about you seems
  Born in Samarkand.’
  • Rachel Taylor, "The Princess of Scotland"

• White on a throne or guarded in a cave
    There lies a prophet who can understand
  Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
    Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
  • James Elroy Flecker, Hassan of Bagdad (1922), Act 5, Scene 2
  • The last line is sometimes rendered "Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."

• To learn the age-old lesson day by day:
  It is not in the bright arrival planned,
  But in the dreams men dream along the way,
  They find the Golden Road to Samarkand.
  • George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman at the Charge (1973)