KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS

Out from Jerusalem
The King rode with his great
War chiefs and lords of state,
And Sheba's queen with them;

Comely, but black withal,
To whom, perchance, belongs
That wondrous Song of Songs,
Sensuous and mystical,

Whereto devout souls turn
In fond, ecstatic dream,
And through its earth-born theme
The Love of Loves discern.

Proud in the Syrian sun,
In gold and purple sheen,
The dusky Ethiop queen
Smiled on King Solomon.

Wisest of men, he knew
The languages of all
The creatures great or small
That trod the earth or flew.

Across an ant-hill led
The king's path, and he heard
Its small folk, and their word
He thus interpreted:

"Here comes the king men greet
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet."

The king, understanding the language of insects, turns to the queen and
explains to her what the ants have just said. She advises him to pay no
attention to the sarcasm of the ants--how dare such vile creatures speak
thus about a king! But Solomon thinks otherwise:

"Nay," Solomon replied,
"The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak,"
And turned his horse aside.

His train, with quick alarm,
Curved with their leader round
The ant-hill's peopled mound,
And left it free from harm.

The jewelled head bent low;
"Oh, king!" she said, "henceforth
The secret of thy worth
And wisdom well I know.

"Happy must be the State
Whose ruler heedeth more
The murmurs of the poor
Than flatteries of the great."

The reference to the Song of Songs--also the Song of Solomon and Canticle
of Canticles--may require a little explanation. The line "Comely but black
withal," is borrowed from a verse of this song--"I am black but beautiful,
oh, ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of
Solomon." In another part of the song the reason of this blackness is
given: "I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." From which we
can see that the word black only means dark, brown, tanned by the sun.
Perhaps you do not know that as late as the middle of the eighteenth
century it was still the custom in England to speak of a person with black
hair and eyes as "a black man"--a custom which Charles Lamb had reason to
complain of even at a later day. The tents referred to in the text were
pro