Solomon and the Witch -- William Butler Yeats

 Guest poem submitted by Cristina Gazzieri:

(Poem #407) Solomon and the Witch And thus declared the Arab lady: "Last night where under the wild moon On grassy mattress I had lain me, Within my arms great Solomon, I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue Not his, not mine." And he that knew All sounds by bird or angel sung Answered: "A crested cockerel crew Upon 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. A lover with a spider's eye Will found out some appropriate pain, Aye, though all passion's in the glance, For every nerve: lover tests lover With cruelties of Choice and Chance; And when at last the murder's over Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And 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 night Gave Sheba to her Solomon." "Yet the world stays": "If that be so, Your cockerel found us in the wrong Although it thought it worth a crow. Maybe an image is too strong Or maybe is not strong enough" "The night has fallen; not a sound In the forbidden sacred grove, Unless a petal hit the ground, Nor any human sight within it But the crushed grass where we have lain; And the moon is wilder every minute. Oh, Solomon! Let us try again." -- William Butler Yeats

Love poetry is an extremely insidious genre. So many great love poems have been
written that it is difficult to equal Shakespeare or Petrarch in elegance,
refinement and conceit, while, on the contrary, the risk of writing
oversentimental, banal or cloying verses is always present . For these reasons,
Reiner Maria Rilke warned a young poet who had addressed him for advice not to
write love poems.

For these reasons, and for the crisis that love, as well as other traditional
values underwent, great poets in the first half of our century preferred to
exercise their skill on other subjects. Yet, even in the tormented years between
the two wars there was a great poet who felt strong enough to write about love,
achieving results of incredible distinction, of grace and taste and, at the same
time, modern in the use of the verse and images. "Solomon and the Witch", for
example can still appeal to the ear of even the most demanding reader, for the
number of poetic elements and the measure and balance with which they are used
in the poem, as well as for the theme which is inevitably dear to all men of the
twentieth century.

One of the elements of great appeal of the poem lies in the choice of the
protagonists; they are Solomon and the queen of Sheba. These two very great
people, representative of two ancient and influential civilisations, who looked
for each other and met and paid tribute one to the greatness of the other,
inevitably evoke the almost mythical respect that history and literature have
had for them, so it is much the more surprising to read that the "Arab lady",
lying within the arms of "great Solomon" should, unexpectedly and abruptly feel
that she does not belong to him, he does not belong to her, and that she should
feel the urge to cry, "in a strange tongue", in words alien to the situation and
her previous mood, "not his, not mine". Before the sixth verse, Yeats has
secured the interest of the modern reader who knows the way in which one can
feel estranged from the person he loves and is also charmed by the idea that
this feeling might be older than he thought, and that not even "great Solomon"
and the queen of Sheba were shielded against it.

Another successful device of the poem is to be found in the dialogic structure
that allows the two protagonists to speak their language, to reveal their
personality and temper. Solomon's speech, which covers the central part of the
poem, is full of biblical reminiscences (The Fall, The apple tree...), of rich
alliterations (a crested cockerel crew; the bride-bed brings despair;.....), of
sharp puns (each an imagined image brings, and finds a real image there.....),
of metaphors (a lover with a spider's eye; when oil and wick are burned in one).
Solomon is the great ruler with a proverbial wisdom and he can make a cynical
analysis of the nature of love. Through the metaphor of the spider he suggests
that seduction and courtship are a tarantula-like process in which each lover
slowly demolishes the personality of the other until an "imagined image" is
finally superimposed. Yet, after the moment of courtship and seduction, when the
superimposed image fades and lovers have to confront themselves with the real
image of their partners "the bride-bed brings despair". "Choice" proves an
illusion and "Chance" seems to mean blind, bleak destiny. It is not possible to
read these lines without linking them to Sheba's cry: "Not his, not mine". The
consideration on the impossibility of a real and enduring communion between two
lovers might seem banal, yet, the banality of the consideration is made
acceptable and does not seem crass thanks to the powerful, resounding language
of Solomon, who, in spite of his awareness of the misery of human love cannot
but end his speech on a tender note: "Therefore a blessed moon last night gave
Sheba to her Solomon".

Comparing Solomon's voice with Sheba's words, Sheba's language is simpler. She
never uses images or references to holy texts and her tone is much more
colloquial and less resonant. She talks the language a lover can attribute to
his woman, not learned, not cultivated, but strongly evocative. All the quality
of Sheba's speech is in the carefully connoted lexical choice, the queen
mentions the "wild moon", "the grassy mattress", and especially in the final
dialogic sequence her language is deliberately addressed only to lyricism. Her
simple words describe a magic natural setting, a "forbidden sacred grove" a
place of the soul which the queen has preserved silent and holy. Sheba concludes
the poem with a sentence of startling freshness and spontaneity especially if
compared with the cynical words of the king: "Oh, Solomon! Let us try again."

The meter of the poem and the rhyme pattern exploit a device that has found
place in poetic tradition since Romanticism. The poem is written on a basically
tetrametric scheme with slight but frequent variations; and the rhyme, though
often present in thepoem, does not follow any regular pattern. The effect when
reading the poem is one of a slightly evasive rhythm, of a project and a
regularity which cannot fully satisfy the ear, close to perfection, but not
really so, like the love of Sheba and Solomon .

What remains after going over the poem several times is not only the pleasure of
the texture of lines and references but also the suggestion of the bewitching
power of love, so strongly denied and yet not eluded by Solomon, so vividly
evoked by Sheba.

Cristina.