ENCORE

This old slow music will have never done

With dancers who were graceful long ago;

A sigh returns them, one by ghostly one,

To tunes and measures that they knew — and know.

These lifted faces, floating on a stream,

Are one with other faces that were fair,—

That once were light, and summertime and dream,

And drifted laughter over hall and stair.

The viols end, and two by two they pass

Out of this blaze into the leafy dark,

Too ghostly and too dim across the grass,

Too soon obscured and blotted, all,— till Hark!

This old, slow music that is like a sigh

For silver feet gone, ah, how lightly by.