genius of Solomon. He continued the chapter in alternating dialogue as between a bridegroom and bride, making their words celebrate the glory and the calling of the Church; then to the bride he assigned the Spring Song, and he must have been thinking of Lebanon with its sweet airs, fragrant spices, flowers, fruit trees, and song birds. For, lo, the winter is past, 66 The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; And the vines are in blossom, They give forth their fragrance." Then Solomon in a song, addressed the Almighty as if He were a dove: That art in the clefts of the rock, In the covert of the steep place, Let me see thy countenance, Let me hear thy voice, For sweet is thy voice, And thy countenance is comely." In this manner the attributes of the beautiful rock dove, that nested in shelving granite and wild places, served to portray the Creator. And a little later, in an attempt to materialize Jehovah, this poet twice used the birds: "My beloved is white and ruddy, His locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks; Washed with milk and fitly set. His checks are as a bed of spices, As banks of sweet herbs." This I consider unsurpassed of its kind. Solomon was so very great he never amplified his thought until he lost it. Just a few clear outlines sufficed, and literature never sustained greater loss than that we have handed down to us, only so few of the one thousand and five poems he recorded that he wrote. His comparisons and poetic imagery never have been equaled. Throughout his songs the most striking lines greet us and, after these thousands of years, set our hearts singing. He was a master of the art of encompassing a poem in a line, as were the ancients of many nations. Take for example that vessel previously mentioned, that was found in the pyramids. On the bottom was written in Chinese this poem, clear cut and concise as the stroke of a skilled surgeon. "For, lo, the spring is here!" All of the showers and flowers, bowers and hours, that could be strung together to tell of April cloud, tree gold, flower bloom, migrating birds, bleating lamb, and babbling brook, could do no more than to suggest to us a small part of the complete glory of the rejuvenation of earth; then why struggle with it? Oceans of words can tell us nothing new or different from that which we were born to enjoy once every season. The least suggestion of any part of that picture instantly conjures the whole of it; then why not content ourselves with merely, "For, lo, the spring is here!" Historians tell us that when a Chinese poet achieves a gem like that he goes out alone and sits silently before the most exquisite spectacle in nature possible to him, and worships his genius. Small wonder! Any one who can eliminate words, dispense with rhymes, and yet put his soul into his theme until it lives century after century, has genius, not only for his own, but for the whole world's worship. Perhaps Bible poets were just a trifle more verbose than the Chinese, but the examples they set us are such as those poetically inclined might follow prayerfully. The history of the world does not produce greater poets nor stylists to equal Solomon, David, Job, and Isaiah. Allow these complete poems of Solomon to represent him in comparison with like work from any country: 'We will remember thy love more than wine." "Thy lips, O my bride, drop as the honeycomb." "My beloved is mine, and I am his." Then, in one great poetic outburst, such lines as these combined in one of the masterpieces of all time: "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm: For love is strong as death; Jealousy is cruel as the grave: The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, A very flame of the Lord. Many waters can not quench love, Neither can the floods drown it: If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, It would utterly be contemned." |