SOLOMON AND THE WITCH
And thus declared that Arab lady:
“Last night, where under the wild moon
On grassy mattress I had laid me,
Within my arms great Solomon,
I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue
Not his, not mine.”
And he that knew
All sounds by bird or angel sung
Answered: “A crested cockerel crew
Upon a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And never crew again till now,
And would not now but that he thought,
Chance being at one with Choice at last,
All that the brigand apple brought
And this foul world were dead at last.
He that crowed out eternity
Thought to have crowed it in again.
A lover with a spider’s eye
Will find out some appropriate pain,
Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,
For every nerve: lover tests lover
With cruelties of Choice and Chance;
And when at last that murder’s over
Maybe the bride-bed brings despair
For each an imagined image brings
“Last night, where under the wild moon
On grassy mattress I had laid me,
Within my arms great Solomon,
I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue
Not his, not mine.”
And he that knew
All sounds by bird or angel sung
Answered: “A crested cockerel crew
Upon a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And never crew again till now,
And would not now but that he thought,
Chance being at one with Choice at last,
All that the brigand apple brought
And this foul world were dead at last.
He that crowed out eternity
Thought to have crowed it in again.
A lover with a spider’s eye
Will find out some appropriate pain,
Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,
For every nerve: lover tests lover
With cruelties of Choice and Chance;
And when at last that murder’s over
Maybe the bride-bed brings despair
For each an imagined image brings
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