Solomon and the Witch

Opinion is not worth a rush;In this altar-piece the knight,Who grips his long spear so to pushThat dragon through the fading light,Loved the lady; and it’s plainThe half-dead dragon was her thought,That every morning rose againAnd dug its claws and shrieked and fought.Could the impossible come to passShe would have time to turn her eyes,Her lover thought, upon the glassAnd on the instant would grow wise.

Put it so;But bear in mind your lover’s wageIs what your looking-glass can show,And that he will turn green with rageAt all that is not pictured there.

Go pluck Athena by the hair;For what mere book can grant a knowledgeWith an impassioned gravityAppropriate to that beating breast,That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye?And may the devil take the rest.

Paul VeroneseAnd all his sacred companyImagined bodies all their daysBy the lagoon you love so much,For proud, soft, ceremonious proofThat all must come to sight and touch;While Michael Angelo’s Sistine roofHis ‘Morning’ and his ‘Night’ discloseHow sinew that has been pulled tight,Or it may be loosened in repose,Can rule by supernatural rightYet be but sinew.

I have principles to prove me right.It follows from this Latin textThat blest souls are not composite.And that all beautiful women mayLive in uncomposite blessedness,And lead us to the like--if theyWill banish every thought, unlessThe lineaments that please their viewWhen the long looking-glass is full,Even from the foot-sole think it too.

And thus declared that Arab lady:“Last night, where under the wild moonOn grassy mattress I had laid me,Within my arms great Solomon,I suddenly cried out in a strange tongueNot his, not mine.”And he that knewAll sounds by bird or angel sungAnswered: “A crested cockerel crewUpon a blossoming apple boughThree 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 broughtAnd this foul world were dead at last.He that crowed out eternityThought to have crowed it in again.A lover with a spider’s eyeWill find out some appropriate pain,Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,For every nerve: lover tests loverWith cruelties of Choice and Chance;And when at last that murder’s overMaybe the bride-bed brings despairFor each an imagined image bringsAnd finds a real image there;Yet the world ends when these two things,Though several, are a single light,When oil and wick are burned in one;Therefore a blessed moon last nightGave Sheba to her Solomon.”

“Yet the world stays:”“If that be so,Your cockerel found us in the wrongAlthough he thought it worth a crow.Maybe an image is too strongOr maybe is not strong enough.”

“The night has fallen; not a soundIn the forbidden sacred groveUnless a petal hit the ground,Nor any human sight within itBut the crushed grass where we have lain;And the moon is wilder every minute.Oh, Solomon! let us try again.”

Never until this night have I been stirred.The elaborate star-light has thrown reflectionsOn the dark stream,Till all the eddies gleam;And thereupon there comes that screamFrom terrified, invisible beast or bird:Image of poignant recollection.