She dances like the moonlight—light, languorous, aswoon.
Her face floats uplifted, a flower to the moon,
To the moon pale in heaven and the dawn coming slow,
And under her measure the ripples breathe low,
"The dancer, the dancer from ages ago!"
Oh, dance me no more! Witching dancer be gone!
For my heart's a still shore in the hugeness of dawn,
And some answer is thrilling, is trembling for me
In the eerie still brightness of heaven and sea,
And the little ripples whisper, "What thing can it be?"
Pale dancer, pale dancer, atread without breath,
Majestic and yearning and brooding as death,
Oh, passion of my heart, oh, enchanted despair
That glides before God like a bird from a snare,
Return, then, return to me, clothe me with care!—
But the beautiful dancer has vanished in air.
PREMONITION
(Written in absence and unaware of her desperate condition, a few days before her death.)
This is the song I shall make.
Love with white wing bids it wake.
Love with dark wing bids it die.
Trailing to dimness, the flood of my passion,
Glittering to darkness, the necklace I fashion
To loop on the breast of the sky!
I have climbed high, even I,
Following a light through a rift in the blue,
Following a silence that pierced like a cry,
Following the image of you.
This is the song I will fashion for you.
Oh ragged-jawed, jagged-toothed Dragon of Time,
What will you do with the weft of my rhyme,
You who have pawed every jewel in slime—
You!
No, in this space between darkness and light,
Holiness gleams like a rift in the night
Here where I stand and command the full height,
All of the glory and gall …
Wrestle and struggle and surge for the height—
And fall….