Dreams & Dust/The Sage and the Woman

'TWIXT ancient Beersheba and Dan Another such a caravan Dazed Palestine had never seen As that which bore Sabea's queen Up from the fain and flaming South To slake her yearning spirit's drouth At wisdom's pools, with Solomon.

With gifts of scented sandalwood, And labdanum, and cassia-bud, With spicy spoils of Araby And camel-loads of ivory And heavy cloths that glanced and shone With inwrought pearl and beryl-stone She came, a bold Sabean girl.

And did she find him grave, or gay? Perchance his palace breathed that day With psalters sounding solemnly-- Or cymbals' merrier minstrelsy-- Perchance the wearied monarch heard Some loose-tongued prophet's meddling word;-- None knows, no one--but Solomon!

She looked--with eyne wherein were blent All ardors of the Orient; She spake--all magics of the South Were compassed in the witch's mouth;-- He thought the scarlet lips of her More precious than En Gedi's myrrh, The lips of that Sabean girl;

By many an amorous sun caressed, From lifted brow to amber breast She gleamed in vivid loveliness-- And lithe as any leopardess-- And verily, one blames thee not If thine own proverbs were forgot, O Solomon, wise Solomon!

She danced for him, and surely she Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea

Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed While the wild pipes of witchcraft played Such clutching music 'twould impel A prophet's self to dance to hell-- So spun the light Sabean girl.

He swore her laughter had the lilt Of chiming waters that are spilt In sprays of spurted melody From founts of carven porphyry, And in the billowy turbulence Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense-- Dark tides and deep, O Solomon!

Perchance unto her day belongs His poem called the Song of Songs, Each little lyric interval Timed to her pulse's rise and fall;-- Or when he cried out wearily That all things end in vanity Did he mean that Sabean girl?

The bright barbaric opulence, The sun-kist Temple, Kedar's tents,--

How many a careless caravan 'Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan, Within these forty centuries, Has flung their dust to many a breeze, With dust that was King Solomon!

But still the lesson holds as true, O King, as when she lessoned you: That very wise men are not wise Until they read in Folly's eyes The wisdom that escapes the schools, That bids the sage revise his rules By light of some Sabean girl!