The Sage And The Woman Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCD EEFGHHI JJGKEED EECCLLI EEKKEED GG EEMMI EEGGKKD KKNOGGI KK AAKKD PPKKKKI'Twixt ancient Beersheba and Dan | A |
Another such a caravan | A |
Dazed Palestine had never seen | B |
As that which bore Sabea's queen | B |
Up from the fain and flaming South | C |
To slake her yearning spirit's drouth | C |
At wisdom's pools with Solomon | D |
- | |
With gifts of scented sandalwood | E |
And labdanum and cassia bud | E |
With spicy spoils of Araby | F |
And camel loads of ivory | G |
And heavy cloths that glanced and shone | H |
With inwrought pearl and beryl stone | H |
She came a bold Sabean girl | I |
- | |
And did she find him grave or gay | J |
Perchance his palace breathed that day | J |
With psalters sounding solemnly | G |
Or cymbals' merrier minstrelsy | K |
Perchance the wearied monarch heard | E |
Some loose tongued prophet's meddling word | E |
None knows no one but Solomon | D |
- | |
She looked with eyne wherein were blent | E |
All ardors of the Orient | E |
She spake all magics of the South | C |
Were compassed in the witch's mouth | C |
He thought the scarlet lips of her | L |
More precious than En Gedi's myrrh | L |
The lips of that Sabean girl | I |
- | |
By many an amorous sun caressed | E |
From lifted brow to amber breast | E |
She gleamed in vivid loveliness | K |
And lithe as any leopardess | K |
And verily one blames thee not | E |
If thine own proverbs were forgot | E |
O Solomon wise Solomon | D |
- | |
She danced for him and surely she | G |
Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea | G |
- | |
Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed | E |
While the wild pipes of witchcraft played | E |
Such clutching music 'twould impel | M |
A prophet's self to dance to hell | M |
So spun the light Sabean girl | I |
- | |
He swore her laughter had the lilt | E |
Of chiming waters that are spilt | E |
In sprays of spurted melody | G |
From founts of carven porphyry | G |
And in the billowy turbulence | K |
Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense | K |
Dark tides and deep O Solomon | D |
- | |
Perchance unto her day belongs | K |
His poem called the Song of Songs | K |
Each little lyric interval | N |
Timed to her pulse's rise and fall | O |
Or when he cried out wearily | G |
That all things end in vanity | G |
Did he mean that Sabean girl | I |
- | |
The bright barbaric opulence | K |
The sun kist Temple Kedar's tents | K |
- | |
How many a careless caravan | A |
'Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan | A |
Within these forty centuries | K |
Has flung their dust to many a breeze | K |
With dust that was King Solomon | D |
- | |
But still the lesson holds as true | P |
O King as when she lessoned you | P |
That very wise men are not wise | K |
Until they read in Folly's eyes | K |
The wisdom that escapes the schools | K |
That bids the sage revise his rules | K |
By light of some Sabean girl | I |
Don Marquis
(1)
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