Tears of delight and gratefulness,--blessed tears,--sparkle upon Sulamith"s pale and beautiful face. Languishing with love, she sinks to the ground and whispers words of madness in a barely audible voice.
"Our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedars.... Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth--for thy love is better than wine...."
After a brief s.p.a.ce Sulamith is lying with her head upon Solomon"s breast. His left arm is embracing her.
Bending to her very ear, the king is whispering something to her; the king is tenderly apologizing, and Sulamith reddens from his words and closes her eyes. Then, with an inexpressibly lovely smile of confusion, she says:
"My mother"s children made me the keeper of the vineyard.... But mine own vineyard have I not kept."
But Solomon takes her little swarthy hand and presses it fervently to his lips.
"Thou dost not regret this, Sulamith?"
"O nay, my king, my beloved. I regret it not. Wert thou to arise this minute and go from me, and were I condemned never to see thee after, I would to the end of my life utter thy name with grat.i.tude, Solomon!"
"Tell me one thing else, Sulamith.... Only, I beseech thee, speak the truth, my undefiled.... Didst thou know who I am?"
"Nay,--even now I know it not. Methought.... But I am shamed to confess it.... I fear thou wilt laugh at me.... They tell, that here, upon Mount Beth-El-Khav, pagan G.o.ds do oft wander.... Many of them, it is said, are beautiful.... And methought: art thou not Hor, the son of Osiris; or else some other G.o.d?"
"Nay, I am but a king, beloved. But here, upon this spot, I kiss thy dear hand, scorched of the sun, and swear to thee that never yet--neither in the time of first love longings, nor in the days of my glory--has my heart flamed with such an insatiable desire as that which is awakened within me by thy mere smile, by the mere touch of thy flaming locks,--the mere curve of thy purple lips! Thou art comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains in the temple of Solomon! Thy caresses intoxicate me. Behold thy b.r.e.a.s.t.s--they are fragrant. Thy nipples are as wine!"
"O, yea,--gaze, gaze upon me, beloved. Thy eyes arouse me! O, what joy!--for thy desire is unto me,--me! Thy locks are scented. As a bundle of myrrh thou dost lie betwixt my b.r.e.a.s.t.s!"
Time ceases its current and closes over them in a solar cycle. Their bed is the green; their roof is of cedars; and their walls are of cypresses.
And the banner over their tent is love.
CHAPTER SEVEN
VII.
The king had a pool in his palace,--an octagonal, fresh pool of white marble. Steps of dark-green malachite ran down to its bottom. A facing of aegyptian jasper, snowy-white, with pink, barely perceptible little veins, served as a frame for the pool. The best of ebony had gone for the ornamentation of the walls. Four lions" heads of pink sardonyx cast forth the water in thin jets into the pool. Eight mirrors of polished silver, the height of a man and of excellent Sydonian workmanship, were set into the walls, between the slender columns of white.
Before Sulamith was to enter the pool, young maid-servants poured aromatic compounds into it, that made the water to turn white and blue and to play with all the colours of a milky opal. The female slaves disrobing Sulamith gazed with delight upon her body; and, when they had disrobed her, they led her up to a mirror. Not a single blemish was there upon her beautiful body, made aureate like a tawny, ripe fruit by the golden down of soft hair. And she, gazing upon her naked self in the mirror, turned red and thought:
"All this is for thee, my king!"
She came out of the pool fresh, cool, and fragrant, covered with quivering drops of water. The female slaves put upon her a short white tunic of the finest aegyptian linen, and a chiton of precious Sargonian byssin, of such a refulgent golden colour that the garment seemed woven out of the rays of the sun. They shod her feet in red sandals made from the skin of a young kid; they dried her dark, flaming locks and bound them with strings of large black pearls; and they adorned her arms with tinkling bracelets.
In such array did she come before Solomon, and the king exclaimed joyously:
"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun? O, Sulamith, thy beauty is more terrible than an army with flaunted banners! Seven hundred wives have I known and three hundred concubines, and virgins without number,--thou art but one, my fair! The queens shall behold thee and extoll thee, and all women upon earth shall praise thee. O, Sulamith, that day when thou wilt become my spouse and queen shall be the happiest my heart has known."
Whereupon she walked up to the door of carved olive, and, pressing her cheek against it, said:
"I desire to be but thy slave, Solomon. Behold, I have put my ear to the post of the door. I beseech thee,--in accordance with the law of Moses, nail down my ear in witness of my voluntary bondage before thee."
Then Solomon did command to be brought out of his treasure house precious pendants of deep-red carbuncles, fashioned to resemble elongated pears. He himself put them upon the ears of Sulamith, and said:
"I am my beloved"s, and my beloved is mine."
And, taking Sulamith by the hand, the king brought her to the banqueting house, where his companions and familiars were already awaiting him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VIII.
Seven days had sped since Sulamith had stepped into the palace of the king. Seven days had she and the king taken joyance in love, yet could not be sated therewith.
Solomon loved to adorn his beloved with precious things. "How beautiful are thy little feet in sandals!" he would exclaim in rapture, and, getting down on his knees before her, he would kiss each toe in turn, and put upon them rings with stones so splendid and rare that their like was not to be found even upon the ephod of a high-priest. Sulamith would listen, entranced, whenever he discoursed upon the inner nature of stones, their magic properties and secret significations.
"Here is anthrax, the sacred stone from the land of Ophir," the king would say. "It is hot and moist. Behold, it is red, like blood, like the evening glow, like the blown flower of the pomegranate, like thick wine from the vineyards of En-gedi, like thy lips, my Sulamith, in the morning after a night of love. This is the stone of love, wrath, and blood. Upon the hand of a man languishing in a fever or made drunk by desire, it waxes warmer and glows with a red flame. Put it upon thy hand, my beloved, and thou shalt see it enkindle. If it be brayed to a powder and taken in water, it imparts a glow to the face, allays the stomach, and maketh the soul to rejoice. He that weareth it attaineth power over men. It is a curative for the heart, brain, and memory. But it ought not be worn nigh children, for it doth arouse the pa.s.sions of love around it.
"Here is a transparent stone, the colour of copper verdigris. In the land of the aethiopians, where it is gotten, it is called Mgnadis-Phza.
It was given me by the father of my wife, Queen Astis,--by Shishak, the Pharaoh of aegypt, into whose hands it came through a captive king. Thou seest,--it is not beautiful; yet is its value beyond computation, for but four men on earth possess the stone Mgnadis-Phza. It possesses the unusual property of attracting silver to it, just like a covetous man that loveth the metal. I give it thee, my beloved, for that thou are not covetous.
"Gaze upon these sapphires, Sulamith. Some of them resemble in colour corn-flowers among wheat; others, an autumn sky; others still, the sea in fine weather. This is the stone of virginity,--chill and pure. During far and difficult voyages it is placed in the mouth to allay thirst. It also cureth leprosy and all malignant growths. It bestoweth clarity to thoughts. The priests of Jupiter in Rome wear it upon the index finger.
"The king of all stones is the stone Shamir. The Greeks name it Adamas,--which signifieth, the invincible. It is the hardest of all substances on earth and remains uninjured in the fiercest of fires.
It is the light of the sun, concentrated in the ground and cooled by time.
Admire it, Sulamith,--it playeth with all colours, but in itself remaineth translucent, like a drop of water. It shineth in the darkness of night; but loseth its radiance, even in the daytime, upon the hand of a murderer. The Shamir is tied to the hand of a woman tortured in heavy travail with child; and it is also put upon the left hand by warriors setting out for battle. He that weareth the Shamir findeth favour with kings and hath no dread of evil spirits. The Shamir driveth the mottled colour off the face, purifieth the breath, giveth quiet slumber to lunaticks, and induceth a sweat curative of near proximity to poison.
The Shamir stones are male and female; buried deep in the ground they are capable of multiplying.
"The moonstone, pale and mild, like the shining of the moon,--it is the stone of the Chaldaean and Babylonian magi. Before divination it is placed under the tongue, and it imparts to them the gift of seeing the future. It hath a strange tie with the moon, for during a new moon it groweth chill and shineth more brightly. It is beneficial to woman during that year when from a child she is becoming a woman.
"Wear thou this ring with a smaragd constantly, my beloved, for the smaragd is the favourite stone of Solomon, King of Israel. It is green, pure, gay, tender, like gra.s.s in the spring of the year, and when one gazeth at it for long the heart waxeth radiant; if thou wilt look upon it in the morning, all the day shall hold no hardship of thee. I shall hang a smaragd over thy night couch, my comely one; let it drive evil dreams away from thee; let it lull the beating of thy heart, and divert black thoughts. Serpents and scorpions come not nigh him that weareth a smaragd; but if a smaragd be held before the eyes of a serpent, water shall flow from them, and continue flowing, till it go blind. Pounded smaragd, together with camel"s milk, is given an empoisoned man, that the poison may go off in transpiration; mixed with attar of roses, smaragd cureth the bites of venomous reptiles; while ground with saffron and applied to ailing eyes it eradicates night blindness. It also helps in dysentery and the black cough that is incurable by any human means."
The king also bestowed upon his beloved Lybian amethysts, whose colour resembled early violets, that put forth in forests at the foot of the Lybian mountains,--amethysts, possessed of the wondrous property of curbing wind, mollifying wrath, preserving from intoxication, and helping at the trapping of wild beasts; turquoise of Persepolis, that bringeth happiness in love, endeth connubial quarrels, turneth away the wrath of kings, and is propitious in the breaking and selling of horses; and cat"s-eye,--that guardeth the property, reason, and health of its possessor; and the pale beryllion, blue-green, like sea-water near sh.o.r.e,--a good travelling companion for pilgrims and a remedy against cataract and leprosy; and the vari-coloured agate: he that weareth it hath no dread of the evil machinations of enemies, and avoideth the danger of being crushed in an earthquake; and the apple-green, turbidly-pellucid onychion,--its master"s guardian from fire and madness; and iaspis, that maketh beasts to tremble; and the black swallow-stone, that endoweth with eloquence; and the eagle-stone, esteemed of pregnant women,--eagles put it in their nests when the time comes for their young to break out of their sh.e.l.ls; and zaberzate out of Ophir, shining like little suns; and yellow-aureate chrysolite,--the friend of merchants and thieves; and sardonyx, beloved of kings and queens; and the crimson ligurion: it is found, as all know, in the stomach of the lynx, whose sight is so keen that it can see through walls,--and for that reason he that weareth a ligurion is also noted for keen sight, and besides this it stoppeth bleeding of the nose, and healeth all wounds, save wounds inflicted by stone or iron.
The king also put upon Sulamith"s neck carcanets of great price, of pearls that had been dived for in the Persian Sea by his subjects; and the pearls put on a living l.u.s.tre and a soft colour from the warmth of her body. And corals became redder upon her swarthy breast; and turquoise came to life upon her fingers; and those baubles of yellow amber which were brought from far northern seas, in gift to the king, by the doughty ship-masters of Hiram, King of Tyre, emitted crackling sparks in her hands.
With marigolds and lilies did Sulamith deck her couch, preparing it for the night; and, reposing upon her breast, the king would say in the joyousness of his heart:
"Thou are like to the king"s decked, masted boat in the Land of Ophir, O my beloved; a light, golden boat that floats, swaying, upon the sacred river, among white fragrant blossoms."
Thus did his first--and last--love come to Solomon, the greatest of kings and wisest of sages.