* * * * *
Though the Queen of Sheba loved Solomon
She was not happy at Lebanon,
It was not the woman of the Edomites,
The Zidonians,
The Moabites,
The Hittites,
or the Ammonites!
She would even listen to his proverbs, she put up with
very many wrongs—
But in secretly reading his notebook, she found Solomon's
"Song-of-Songs"
She knew it at once—it was poetry! And she left The
Palace that day,
But Solomon knew not where she went to nor why she had
roamed away!
But every evening in Jerusalem
The Almug and the Nutmeg trees
Flaunt the Sheban National Anthem
Like a banner on the spice-laden breeze.
And oh! each golden bell
Seemed a turtle-dove
That coo'd
Within the moonlit shadow
Of an Abyssinian wood....
* * * * *
But we wonder what she looked like—this fascinating
phantasmagoria....
Atalanta, Gioconda, Semiramis—or the late Queen Victoria?
I. NEPTUNE IN CHAINS
Enslaved are the old Gods;
Pan pipes soundlessly
For the unheeding bees.
Bound by the trailing tresses of the vine
To soft captivity,
Neptune has left his waves
To stand beneath the frozen, green cascades
Of summer trees.
Is the Sea-God, then, content to rule
The rippling of wayward flowers,
Lulled by the songs that many birds pour out
From their green-cradles, gently-rocked
—Songs that foam like hissing rain
Among the heavy blossoms?
Can he control
The music of the wind through poplar trees,
—Those trees, an instrument
That any wind, however young
Or drunk with drowsing scent
Of petals, crushed by the flaming fingers of the sun
Can play upon?
But darkness, the deliverer
Comes with dreams.
Night's grape-stained waves
Cool his aching body—
The song of the nightingale
Falls round him
Like the froth of little waves;
The warm touch of the evening wind
Thaws the green cascades
Till you can hear
Every liquid sound within the world
—Fountains, falling waterfalls,
And the low murmur of the rolling sea
—And Neptune dreams that he is free.