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Updated: June 27, 2025
If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it.
Many years ago I read a delightful poem called The Paradise of Birds I believe it was by Mortimer Collins, but I am not sure. He cannot have known of Kashmir, or he would assuredly have sent the persecuted birds thither, and placed the "Roc's Egg" as janitor, somewhere by the portals of the Jhelum Valley.
He assures us that when Roc was not drunk he was esteemed, but at the same time feared; but there are various ways of gaining esteem, and Roc's method certainly succeeded very well in the case of his literary associate.
What a fool I had been what an idiot to have thrown away my chances as I had done! I had wished for "the roc's egg" to complete my happiness; and I had obtained it with a vengeance. My roc's egg had been the "open sesame" to Mrs Clyde's castle. I had sighed for it, striven for it, gained it at last; and, a fine mess I had made of it, all things considered! What must she think me?
"Quick as thought, I unbound my turban, and twisted it into a rope. Then I wound it round and round my waist, and tied the two ends tightly round the roc's leg, which was close to where I stood. "'It will fly away soon, and carry me away with it off this desert island, I said to myself joyfully.
"Princess," said the false Fatima, with great dissimulation, "forgive me the liberty I have taken; but my opinion is, if it can be of any importance, that if a roc's egg were hung up in the middle of the dome, this hall would have no parallel in the four quarters of the world, and your palace would be the wonder of the universe."
"I can never be happy until I have a roc's egg hanging from the dome of the great hall," she answered. "In that case thou shalt soon be happy," said Aladdin gaily, and taking down the lamp, he summoned the Genie. But when the Slave of the Lamp heard the order his face grew terrible with rage, and his eyes gleamed like burning coals.
"Genie," said Aladdin, "there wants a roc's egg to be hung up in the midst of the dome; I command thee, in the name of this lamp, to repair the deficiency." Aladdin had no sooner pronounced these words, than the genie gave so loud and terrible a cry, that the hall shook, and Aladdin could scarcely stand upright.
The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had scarcely ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he had found a roc's egg in the island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like a tit-lark's, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly been drowned in the yolk.
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