The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems

E-text prepared by Brendan Lane, Carol David, and Project Gutenberg
Distributed Proofreaders
1913
Not all my treasure hath the bandit Time Locked in his glimmering caverns of the Past: Fair women dead and friendships of old rhyme, And noble dreams that had to end at last:— Ah! these indeed; and from youth's sacristy Full many a holy relic hath he torn, Vessels of mystic faith God filled for me, Holding them up to Him in life's young morn.
All these are mine no more—Time hath them all, Time and his adamantine gaoler Death: Despoilure vast—yet seemeth it but small, When unto thee I turn, thy bloom and breath Filling with light and incense the last shrine, Innermost, inaccessible,—yea, thine.
I had no heart to join the dance, I danced it all so long ago— Ah! light-winged music out of France, Let other feet glide to and fro, Weaving new patterns of romance For bosoms of new-fallen snow.
But leave me thus where I may hear The leafy rustle of the waltz, The shell-like murmur in my ear, The silken whisper fairy-false Of unseen rainbows circling near, And the glad shuddering of the walls.
Another dance the dancers spin, A shadow-dance of mystic pain, And other partners enter in And dance within my lonely brain— The swaying woodland shod in green, The ghostly dancers of the rain;
The lonely dancers of the sea, Foam-footed on the sandy bar, The wizard dance of wind and tree, The eddying dance of stream and star; Yea, all these dancers tread for me A measure mournful and bizarre:
An echo-dance where ear is eye, And sound evokes the shapes of things, Where out of silence and a sigh The sad world like a picture springs, As, when some secret bird sweeps by, We see it in the sound of wings.
Those human feet upon the floor, That eager pulse of rhythmic breath,— How sadly to an unknown shore Each silver footfall hurryeth; A dance of autumn leaves, no more, On the fantastic wind of death.
Fire clasped to elemental fire, 'Tis thus the solar atom whirls; The butterfly in aery gyre, On autumn mornings, swarms and swirls, In dance of delicate desire, No other than these boys and girls.