The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems

by Richard Le Gallienne

THE LONELY DANCER

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.

The same strange music everywhere,
The woven paces just the same,
Dancing from out the viewless air
Into the void from whence they came;
Ah! but they make a gallant flare
Against the dark, each little flame!

And what if all the meaning lies
Just in the music, not in those
Who dance thus with transfigured eyes,
Holding in vain each other close;
Only the music never dies,
The dance goes on,—the dancer goes.

A woman dancing, or a world
Poised on one crystal foot afar,
In shining gulfs of silence whirled,
Like notes of the strange music are;
Small shape against another curled,
Or dancing dust that makes a star.

To him who plays the violin
All one it is who joins the reel,
Drops from the dance, or enters in;
So that the never-ending wheel
Cease not its mystic course to spin,
For weal or woe, for woe or weal.

I

FLOS AEVORUM

You must mean more than just this hour,
You perfect thing so subtly fair,
Simple and complex as a flower,
Wrought with such planetary care;
How patient the eternal power
That wove the marvel of your hair.

How long the sunlight and the sea
Wove and re-wove this rippling gold
To rhythms of eternity;
And many a flashing thing grew old,
Waiting this miracle to be;
And painted marvels manifold,

Still with his work unsatisfied,
Eager each new effect to try,
The solemn artist cast aside,
Rainbow and shell and butterfly,
As some stern blacksmith scatters wide
The sparks that from his anvil fly.

How many shells, whorl within whorl,
Litter the marges of the sphere
With wrack of unregarded pearl,
To shape that little thing your ear:
Creation, just to make one girl,
Hath travailed with exceeding fear.

The moonlight of forgotten seas
Dwells in your eyes, and on your tongue
The honey of a million bees,
And all the sorrows of all song:
You are the ending of all these,
The world grew old to make you young.

All time hath traveled to this rose;
To the strange making of this face
Came agonies of fires and snows;
And Death and April, nights and days
Unnumbered, unimagined throes,
Find in this flower their meeting place.

Strange artist, to my aching thought
Give answer: all the patient power
That to this perfect ending wrought,
Shall it mean nothing but an hour?
Say not that it is all for nought
Time brings Eternity a flower.

All the words in all the world
Cannot tell you how I love you,
All the little stars that shine
To make a silver crown above you;

"ALL THE WORDS IN ALL THE WORLD"

All the flowers cannot weave
A garland worthy of your hair,
Not a bird in the four winds
Can sing of you that is so fair.

Only the spheres can sing of you;
Some planet in celestial space,
Hallowed and lonely in the dawn,
Shall sing the poem of your face.

"I SAID—I CARE NOT"

I said—I care not if I can
But look into her eyes again,
But lay my hand within her hand
Just once again.

Though all the world be filled with snow
And fire and cataclysmal storm,
I'll cross it just to lay my head
Upon her bosom warm.

Ah! bosom made of April flowers,
Might I but bring this aching brain,
This foolish head, and lay it down
On April once again!

"ALL THE WIDE WORLD IS BUT THE THOUGHT OF YOU"

All the wide world is but the thought of you:
Who made you out of wonder and of dew?
Was it some god with tears in his deep eyes,
Who loved a woman white and over-wise,
That strangely put all violets in your hair—
And put into your face all distance too?

"LIGHTNINGS MAY FLICKER ROUND MY HEAD"

Lightnings may flicker round my head,
And all the world seem doom,
If you, like a wild rose, will walk
Strangely into the room.

If only my sad heart may hear
Your voice of faery laughter—
What matters though the heavens fall,
And hell come thundering after.

"THE AFTERNOON IS LONELY FOR YOUR FACE"

The afternoon is lonely for your face,
The pampered morning mocks the day's decline—
I was so rich at noon, the sun was mine,
Mine the sad sea that in that rocky place
Girded us round with blue betrothal ring.
Because your heart was mine, your heart, that precious thing.

The night will be a desert till the dawn,
Unless you take some ferry-boat of dreams,
And glide to me, a glory of silver beams,
Under my eyelids, like sad curtains drawn;
So, by good hap, my heart can find its way
Where all your sweetness lies in fragrant disarray.

Ah! but with morn the world begins anew,
Again the sea shall sing up to your feet,
And earth and all the heavens call you sweet,
You all alone with me, I all alone with you,
And all the business of the laurelled hours
Shyly to gaze on that betrothal ring of ours.

"SORE IN NEED WAS I OF A FAITHFUL FRIEND"

Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
And it seemed to me that life
Had come to its much desired end—
Just then God gave me a wife.

I had seen the beauty of fairy things,
And seen the women walk;
I had heard the voice of the seven sins
And all the wonderful talk.

Ah, the promising earth that seems so kind,
And the comrades with outstretched hand—
But did you ever stand alone
In a black, forsaken land?
Then the wonderful things that God can do
One comes to understand:

How He turns the desert dust to a dream,
And the lonely wind to a friend,
And makes a bright beginning
Of what had seemed the end:
'Twas in such an hour God placed in mine
The moonbeam hand of a friend.

"I THOUGHT, BEFORE MY SUNLIT TWENTIETH YEAR"

I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,
That I knew Love, and Death that goes with it;
And my young broken heart in little songs,
Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end
Wildly—and waited—being then nineteen.
I walked a little longer on my way,
Alive, 'gainst expectation and desire,
And, being then past twenty, I beheld
The face of all the faces of the world
Dewily opening on its stem for me.
Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,
Thus hath some woman blossom of the divine
Flowered in my path, and made a frail delay
In my true journey—to my home in thee.

October 27, 1911.