Classic and Contemporary Poetry
EVOLUTIONARY EROTICS: SOLOMON REDIVIVUS, 1886, by CONSTANCE CAROLINE WOODHILL NADEN Poet's Biography First Line: What am I? Ah, you know it Last Line: And I king solomon. Subject(s): Evolution; Solomon (10th Century B.c.) | ||||||||
WHAT am I? Ah, you know it, I am the modern Sage, Seer, savant, merchant, poet -- I am, in brief, the Age. Look not upon my glory Of gold and sandal-wood, But sit and hear a story From Darwin and from Buddh. Count not my Indian treasures, All wrought in curious shapes, My labours and my pleasures, My peacocks and my apes; For when you ask me riddles, And when I answer each, Until my fifes and fiddles Burst in and drown our speech, Oh then your soul astonished Must surely faint and fail, Unless, by me admonished, You hear our wondrous tale. We were a soft Amoeba In ages past and gone, Ere you were Queen Of Sheba, And I King Solomon. Unorganed, undivided, We lived in happy sloth, And all that you did I did, One dinner nourished both: Till you incurred the odium Of fission and divorce -- A severed pseudopodium You strayed your lonely course. When next we met together Our cycles to fulfil, Each was a bag of leather, With stomach and with gill. But our Ascidian morals Recalled that old mischance, And we avoided quarrels By separate maintenance. Long ages passed -- our wishes Were fetterless and free, For we were jolly fishes, A-swimming in the sea. We roamed by groves of coral, We watched the youngsters play -- The memory and the moral Had vanished quite away. Next, each became a reptile, With fangs to sting and slay; No wiser ever crept, I'll Assert, deny who may. But now, disdaining trammels Of scale and limbless coil, Through every grade of mammals We passed with upward toil. Till, anthropoid and wary Appeared the parent ape, And soon we grew less hairy, And soon began to drape. So, from that soft Amoeba, In ages past and gone, You've grown the Queen of Sheba, And I King Solomon. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SOLOMON TO SHEBA by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS SOLOMON AND THE WITCH by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS SOLOMON'S PARENTS by GORDON BOTTOMLEY SOLOMON AND BALKIS by ROBERT BROWNING THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: KING SOLOMON by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON ON PRIOR'S SOLOMON by JOHN BYROM SOLOMON'S PRAYER by MARY HAMPDEN CUTTS THE DEAD SOLOMON by JOHN AYLMER DORGAN A LETTER by CONSTANCE CAROLINE WOODHILL NADEN |
|