Samarkand
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
[edit]- 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)
