PC_256_Poe_1910_1911_Typescript_068

NAMES OF ROMANCE.

Around the good world's wide expanse
Are places great and small,
Whose names fair tingle with romance --
And I would see them all:
There's Cairo, Fez, and Ispahan,
Bangkok and Singapore,
And Trebizonde and Cagayan,
And Rio and Lahore.

There's Sarawak and Callao,
Algiers and Kandahar,
Khartum, Rangoon, and Tokyo,
Bombay and Zanzibar:
About the name of each there clings
Enchantment's golden veil,
The wonder of strange folk and things,
The glamor of the trail!

For some are north and some are south
And some are east and west,
And some are curse with heat and drouth
And some with balm are blessed;
But Capetown, Rhodes, or Disco Bay,
Shanghai, Seville, or Rome,
Their names come singing down the way
To tempt me forth from home,
Their magic's springing down the way,
To lure me forth from home!

-- By Berton Braley.