Solomon and the Witch

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1921from Michael Robartes and the Dancer44 lines

And thus declared that Arab lady:“Last night, where under the wild moonOn grassy mattress I had laid me,Within my arms great Solomon,I suddenly cried out in a strange tongueNot his, not mine.”Who understoodWhat ever had been said, sighed, sung,Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,Thereon explained: “A cockerelCried from a blossoming apple boughThree 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 broughtAnd this foul world were dead at last.He that crowed out eternityThought to have crowed it in again.For though love has a spider’s eyeTo find out some appropriate pain,Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,For every nerve: and tests a loverWith cruelties of Choice and Chance;And when at last that murder’s overMaybe the bride-bed brings despairFor each an imagined image bringsAnd 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 nightGave Sheba to her Solomon.”

“Yet the world stays”:“If that be so,Your cockerel found us in the wrongAlthough he thought it worth a crow.Maybe an image is too strongOr maybe is not strong enough.”

“The night has fallen; not a soundIn the forbidden sacred groveUnless a petal hit the ground,Nor any human sight within itBut the crushed grass where we have lain;And the moon is wilder every minute.Oh, Solomon! let us try again.”

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Sheba cries out in a strange tongue; Solomon explains the world's end.

Sheba, "that Arab lady", tells how the night before, lying with Solomon under a wild moon, she cried out in a language neither of them knew. Solomon, who understands every sound, says it was a cockerel that last crowed "Three hundred years before the Fall". It crowed again because it thought the world was ending: when Chance and Choice are one, and a lover's imagined image and the real one fuse into "a single light", the world ends. Yet the world is still there. Solomon admits the cockerel was wrong, perhaps because the image was too strong or not strong enough. Sheba answers simply: the moon is wilder, "let us try again."

Lines to remember

Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,

When oil and wick are burned in one;

Oh, Solomon! let us try again.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6A strange cry
Sheba reports that last night, lying "On grassy mattress" with "great Solomon" in her arms, she "suddenly cried out in a strange tongue / Not his, not mine." The scene is frankly erotic, set under a "wild moon".
Lines 7 to 8Solomon understands
Solomon, the one "Who understood", knows every sound ever "said, sighed, sung". The comic list of animal noises, "Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed", piles verb on verb to show the range of his wisdom.
Lines 9 to 18The cockerel
He explains that a cockerel crowed from an apple bough "Three hundred years before the Fall" and not since. It crowed now because it thought that "Chance being at one with Choice at last", this "foul world" was over. Having crowed eternity out, it hoped to crow it back in.
Lines 19 to 27Love's cruelties
Love, he says, "has a spider's eye" to find each lover some fitting pain, and tests lovers "With cruelties of Choice and Chance". Even the marriage bed may bring despair, because each partner brings an imagined image and finds a real one there instead.
Lines 28 to 32A single light
Yet the world ends when those two images, "Though several, are a single light", like "oil and wick" burned together in a lamp. That, he concludes, is why a "blessed moon" last night "Gave Sheba to her Solomon".
Lines 33 to 37The world stays
Sheba objects: "Yet the world stays". Solomon accepts that the cockerel "found us in the wrong", even if it thought the moment "worth a crow". Perhaps "an image is too strong / Or maybe is not strong enough."
Lines 38 to 44Try again
Sheba has the last word. It is night; there is no sound in the "forbidden sacred grove" but a falling petal, and nothing to see but "the crushed grass where we have lain". The moon grows "wilder every minute", and she ends: "Oh, Solomon! let us try again."

Themes

Love and perfection

Solomon's theory is that perfect love would end the world. When the image each lover imagines and the real person are "a single light", like "oil and wick" burning as one, time itself would stop. The poem takes sexual love as seriously as a mystical union, and also laughs at it.

Chance and Choice

Love tests lovers "With cruelties of Choice and Chance". The world ends only when "Chance being at one with Choice at last", when what happens to us and what we will are the same. The capital letters make them into great powers, like figures in a myth.

Humour

The grand theory is framed by comedy: Solomon's list of animal noises, a cockerel that thinks it has spotted the apocalypse, and a failed end of the world. Sheba's cheerful "let us try again" turns cosmic disappointment into an invitation.

Context

The poem was collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, issued by the Cuala Press in February 1921. Yeats had already written of the same pair in "Solomon to Sheba", collected in The Wild Swans at Coole, where the two lovers also talk of love as a kind of learning.

Solomon and Sheba are usually read as masks for Yeats and his wife George, whom he married in October 1917. Her automatic writing, which began on their honeymoon, supplied the ideas of A Vision, and the talk of images, Chance and Choice echoes that shared work.

Form

Forty-four lines of four beats, mostly rhymed alternately ("moon", "Solomon"; "cockerel", "Fall"), in one long speech followed by two short ones. Two lines are split between speakers. Solomon's long, reasoned speech runs on in a single sentence-like surge, while Sheba's closing stanza is quiet and physical.