Page:Wilde - Derniers essais de littérature et d’esthétique, 1913.djvu/71

    « O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me !
    Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead ? Full hard
      for him should it be,
    For deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come
      here,
    who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.
    But no mortal man is living, how strong so e’er in his
      youth,
    who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder
      forsooth
    is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought
      it, and I alone.
    In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree
      full-grown,
    that flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about,
    So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work
      right out
    with ashlar stone close-fitting ; and I roofed it overhead,
    and thereto joined doors I made me, well fitting in their
      stead.
    Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree,
    and shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly,
    I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto,
    and shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored
      it through.
    So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished
      it utterly,
    and with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and
      ivory,
    and stretched on it a thong of oxhide, with the purple
      made bright.
    Thus then the sign I have shown thee ; nor, woman, know
      I aright
    If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place
    Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole
      from its base. »