V - ESTHER DANCING

Speak not nor stir. Here music is alive,

Woven from those swift fingers, strong and light,

Marching across those singing hands, or shed

Slowly, like echoes down the muffled night,

Or beautifully translated, note by note,

Some fainter voice, rhapsodic and remote,

Or shaken out in melodies that dive

Clear into fathoms of profounder things,

Then suddenly again on rising wings,

Burst into sun and hover overhead.

Incarnate music flashing into form

Fled from the vineyards of melodious Greece,

Feet that have flown before the gathering storm

Or glanced in gardens of the Golden Fleece,

Face atune to all the songs that mass

Their gusts of passion on the sunlit grass,

Image of lyric hope and veiled despair,

Like them, thou shalt unutterably pass

Into the silence and the shadowed air.