{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/solomon-and-the-witch",
 "title": "Solomon and the Witch",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "W. B. Yeats",
 "poet_slug": "w-b-yeats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer",
 "book_slug": "michael-robartes-and-the-dancer",
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 "sequence": 1,
 "container": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
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  "sources": [
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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
 },
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  [
   {
    "text": "And thus declared that Arab lady:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Last night, where under the wild moon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On grassy mattress I had laid me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Within my arms great Solomon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not his, not mine.” Who understood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What ever had been said, sighed, sung,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thereon explained: “A cockerel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cried from a blossoming apple bough",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Three hundred years before the Fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And never crew again till now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And would not now but that he thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chance being at one with Choice at last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All that the brigand apple brought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And this foul world were dead at last.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He that crowed out eternity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thought to have crowed it in again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For though love has a spider’s eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find out some appropriate pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aye, though all passion’s in the glance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For every nerve: and tests a lover",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With cruelties of Choice and Chance;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when at last that murder’s over",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Maybe the bride-bed brings despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For each an imagined image brings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And finds a real image there;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet the world ends when these two things,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though several, are a single light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When oil and wick are burned in one;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore a blessed moon last night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gave Sheba to her Solomon.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Yet the world stays”: “If that be so,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your cockerel found us in the wrong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although he thought it worth a crow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Maybe an image is too strong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or maybe is not strong enough.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“The night has fallen; not a sound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the forbidden sacred grove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unless a petal hit the ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor any human sight within it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the crushed grass where we have lain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the moon is wilder every minute.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, Solomon! let us try again.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}