FOR A DANCE

There is in the dance

The joy of children on a May day lawn.

The fragments of old dreams and dead romance

Come to us from the dancers who are gone.

What strains of ancient blood

Move quicker to the music's passionate beat?

I see the gulls fly over a shadowy flood

And Munster fields of barley and of wheat.

And I see sunny France,

And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light,

And faces, faces, yearning for the dance

With wistful eyes that look on our delight.

They live through us again

And we through them, who wish for lips and eyes

Wherewith to feel, not fancy, the old pain

Passed with reluctance through the centuries

To us, who in the maze

Of dancing and hushed music woven afresh

Amid the shifting mirrors of hours and days

Know not our spirit, neither know our flesh;

Nor what ourselves have been,

Through the long way that brought us to the dance:

I see a little green by Camolin

And odorous orchards blooming in Provence.

Two listen to the roar

Of waves moon-smitten, where no steps intrude.

Who knows what lips were kissed at Laracor?

Or who it was that walked through Burnham wood?