Perchance unto her day belongs
His poem called the Song of Songs,
Each little lyric interval
Timed to her pulse's rise and fall;--
Or when he cried out wearily
That all things end in vanity
Did he mean that Sabean girl?

The bright barbaric opulence,
The sun-kist Temple, Kedar's tents,--

How many a careless caravan
'Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan,
Within these forty centuries,
Has flung their dust to many a breeze,
With dust that was King Solomon!

But still the lesson holds as true,
O King, as when she lessoned you:
That very wise men are not wise
Until they read in Folly's eyes
The wisdom that escapes the schools,
That bids the sage revise his rules
By light of some Sabean girl!


NEWS FROM BABYLON

"Archaeologists have discovered a love-letter among the ruins
of Babylon." --Newspaper report.