POETRY.
A DANCER.
FROM floor to ceiling a tense hush upsprcad, Then a short sigh, and then the dance's beat ; The music woke again as from the dead, And surged and trembled up to feel her feet.
She turns amid the loud triumphant tones, Amid the flashing lights, a light, she bends, And where the stricken measure broods and moans, The swaying shadow of her steps attends.
The wizard portals of the realm of sound Lie open under mourning magic night, And far within she tempts the doubtful ground With quick infallible confidence of flight.
The thronging notes take life within her limbs, And play and follow and die upon her hands ; All the vain mutinous words of songs 'and hymns Are hushed at this that moves and understands.
In the beginning, when the sun was lit, The maze of things was marshalled in a dance ; Deep in us lie forgotten strains of it, Like obsolete charmed sleepers of romance. And she remembers : when on thrilling strings And hollow flutes the heart of midnight yearns, The heritage of splendid moving things Descends upon her, and the power returns.
Sovereign of all the passions of the sight, Interpreter of music's utmost will, Whether to swiftness its fantastic might Compel thee, or to solemn motions still, Flit like a dream upon the bounds of thought, That the mind dazzles at in haunted sleep, Or like a shadow out of eloudland caught Along the sounding measures of the deep.
A shadow—a star ! ghost of a star• that shines And wavers on the invisible moving sea, When night takes all but music, yet divines With that one ray the dark dance-melody.
A star ! incredible youth and artist fire, Are other stars left anywhere alight, Or do the very flames of heaven tire Because of this wild ecstasy to-night Nay, in green fabulous places far from man, The dancing gods might lift a drowsy head, And voices rumour out at sea of Pan, Wandering, hiding, slumbering, never dead.
Nature the niggard, with her leaves that fall, Might warm her chilly fingers at thy glow, And stars burn up at thee, as at the call That sang them out of nothing lung ago. D. S. M.
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