Seen By The Waits

Through snowy woods and shady

  We went to play a tune

To the lonely manor-lady

  By the light of the Christmas moon.

We violed till, upward glancing

  To where a mirror leaned,

We saw her airily dancing,

  Deeming her movements screened;

Dancing alone in the room there,

  Thin-draped in her robe of night;

Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,

  Were a strange phantasmal sight.

She had learnt (we heard when homing)

  That her roving spouse was dead;

Why she had danced in the gloaming

  We thought, but never said.

gloaming* - dusk