King Solomon And The Ants

Out from Jerusalem
The king rode with his great
War chiefs and lords of state,
And Sheba's queen with them;

Comely, but black withal,
To whom, perchance, belongs
That wondrous Song of songs,
Sensuous and mystical,

Whereto devout souls turn
In fond, ecstatic dream,
And through its earth-born theme
The Love of loves discern.

Proud in the Syrian sun,
In gold and purple sheen,
The dusky Ethiop queen
Smiled on King Solomon.

Wisest of men, he knew
The languages of all
The creatures great or small
That trod the earth or flew.

Across an ant-hill led
The king's path, and he heard
Its small folk, and their word
He thus interpreted:

"Here comes the king men greet
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet."

The great king bowed his head,
And saw the wide surprise
Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes
As he told her what they said.

"O king!" she whispered sweet,
"Too happy fate have they
Who perish in thy way
Beneath thy gracious feet!

"Thou of the God-lent crown,
Shall these vile creatures dare
Murmur against thee where
The knees of kings kneel down?"

"Nay," Solomon replied,
"The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak,"
And turned his horse aside.

His train, with quick alarm,
Curved with their leader round
The ant-hill's peopled mound,
And left it free from harm.

The jewelled head bent low;
"O king!" she said, "henceforth
The secret of thy worth
And wisdom well I know.

"Happy must be the State
Whose ruler heedeth more
The murmurs of the poor
Than flatteries of the great.

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He was born on December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and died on September 7, 1892, in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings as well as his association with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers whose work became notable in American literature in the 19th century.

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English

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Solomon To Sheba

Sang Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her dusky face,
All day long from mid-day
We have talked in the one place,
All day long from shadowless noon
We have gone round and round
In the narrow theme of love
Like an old horse in a pound.

To Solomon sang Sheba,
Planted on his knees,
If you had broached a matter
That might the learned please,
You had before the sun had thrown
Our shadows on the ground
Discovered that my thoughts, not it,
Are but a narrow pound.

Said Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her Arab eyes,
Theres not a man or woman
Born under the skies
Dare match in learning with us two,
And all day long we have found
Theres not a thing but love can make
The world a narrow pound.

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Dominion.

When found the rose delight in her fair hue?
Color is nothing to this world; 'tis I
That see it. Farther, I have found, my soul,
That trees are nothing to their fellow trees;
It is but I that love their stateliness,
And I that, comforting my heart, do sit
At noon beneath their shadow. I will step
On the ledges of this world, for it is mine;
But the other world ye wot of, shall go too;
I will carry it in my bosom. O my world,
That was not built with clay!
    Consider it
(This outer world we tread on) as a harp, -
A gracious instrument on whose fair strings
We learn those airs we shall be set to play
When mortal hours are ended. Let the wings,
Man, of thy spirit move on it as wind,
And draw forth melody. Why shouldst thou yet
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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."
Who understood
Whatever has been said, sighed, sung,
Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,
Thereon replied: "A cockerel
Crew from 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.
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Saul

Said Abner, At last thou art come!
Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
Kiss my cheek, wish me well! Then I wished it,
And did kiss his cheek.
And he, Since the King, O my friend,
For thy countenance sent,
Nor drunken nor eaten have we;
Nor until from his tent
Thou return with the joyful assurance
The King liveth yet,
Shall our lip with the honey be brightened,
The water be wet.

For out of the black mid-tents silence,
A space of three days,
No sound hath escaped to thy servants,
Of prayer nor of praise,
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit
Have ended their strife,
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch
Sinks back upon life.

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To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise today,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away;
Yes, he who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!

Last night I saw the sunset melt though my prison bars,
Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars;
In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time,
My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime.

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by;
Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky;
No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow
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The Sicilian's Tale - King Robert Of Sicily - The Wayside Inn - Part First

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane
And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine,
Apparelled in magnificent attire,
With retinue of many a knight and squire,
On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat
And heard the priests chant the Magnificat,
And as he listened, o'er and o'er again
Repeated, like a burden or refrain,
He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes
De sede, et exaltavit humiles";
And slowly lifting up his kingly head
He to a learned clerk beside him said,
"What mean these words?"    The clerk made answer meet,
"He has put down the mighty from their seat,
And has exalted them of low degree."
Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully,
"'T is well that such seditious words are sung
Only by priests and in the Latin tongue;
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