AND thus declared that Arab lady: <br />'Last night, where under the wild moon <br />On grassy mattress I had laid me, <br />Within my arms great Solomon, <br />I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue <br />Not his, not mine.' <br />Who understood <br />Whatever has been said, sighed, sung, <br />Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed, <br />Thereon replied: 'A cockerel <br />Crew from a blossoming apple bough <br />Three hundred years before the Fall, <br />And never crew again till now, <br />And would not now but that he thought, <br />Chance being at one with Choice at last, <br />All that the brigand apple brought <br />And this foul world were dead at last. <br />He that crowed out eternity <br />Thought to have crowed it in again. <br />For though love has a spider's eye <br />To find out some appropriate pain -- <br />Aye, though all passion's in the glance -- <br />For every nerve, and tests a lover <br />With cruelties of Choice and Chance; <br />And when at last that murder's over <br />Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, <br />For each an imagined image brings <br />And finds a real image there; <br />Yet the world ends when these two things, <br />Though several, are a single light, <br />When oil and wick are burned in one; <br />Therefore a blessed moon last night <br />Gave Sheba to her Solomon.' <br />'Yet the world stays.' <br />'If that be so, <br />Your cockerel found us in the wrong <br />Although he thought it. worth a crow. <br />Maybe an image is too strong <br />Or maybe is not strong enough.' <br />'The night has fallen; not a sound <br />In the forbidden sacred grove <br />Unless a petal hit the ground, <br />Nor any human sight within it <br />But the crushed grass where we have lain! <br />And the moon is wilder every minute. <br />O! Solomon! let us try again.'<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/solomon-and-the-witch/
