As David with Bath-Sheba lay,
Both drunk with kisses long denied,
The King, with quaking lips and gray,
Beheld a spectre at his side
That said no word nor went away.
Then to his leman spake the King,
The ghostly presence challenging:
“Bath-Sheba, erst Uriah’s wife,
Thy lips are as the Cup of Life
That holds the purplest wine of God,
Too sweet for any underling.”
“Yet,” spake Bath-Sheba, sad of mien,
“Why from thy visage went the sheen
As though thy troubled eye had seen
A shadow, like a dead man’s curse,
Rise threatening from the mound terrene?”
“’Twas but the falling dusk, that fills
The palace with fantastic ills.
Uriah sleeps in alien sands
Soundly. ’Tis not his ghost that stands,
Living or dead, or anything
’Twixt the King’s pleasure and the King.”
Bath-Sheba’s glad heart rose, then fell:
“Where is it that thy fancies dwell?
Is there some maid in Israel
Broad-hipped, with green eyes like the sea,
Whose mouth is like a honey-cell,
And sweeter than the mouth of me?”
“The pressure of thy lips on mine
Is exquisite like snow-cooled wine.
Over the wasteness of my life
Thy love is risen like a sun:
All other loves that once seemed sweet
Are seized by black oblivion.”
Again upon the shadow-thing
He gazed in silence, questioning.
And lo! with quaint familiar ring
A spectral voice addressed the King:
“O David, David, Judah’s swan!
Why unto me dost thou this thing?”
“Who art thou?” “I am Jonathan,
My heart is like a wounded fawn.
“When Saul’s fierce anger, like a bull,
Rose, by the Evil One made blind,
My love to thee was wonderful,
Passing the love of womankind.
Hast thou forgotten everything
My heart aches in remembering?
Is such the harvest of our spring
Of war and love and lute-playing?”
Was it a ghost’s voice or the wind?
For still Bath-Sheba, unaware,
Smiled. But King David ill in mind
Scarce deemed her Beauty half so fair:
“Stale is the wine this evening,
And sick with roses is the air!”
He tore the garland from his hair,
And left Bath-Sheba lying there
Perturbed, and vaguely wondering....