WE caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.’ But she—she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl. FROM ‘THE BURDEN OF ITYS’ THIS English Thames is holier far than Rome, Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea Breaking across the woodland, with the foam Of meadow-sweet and white anemone To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear! Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take Yon creamy lily for their pavilion Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake A lazy pike lies basking in the sun, His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old Bishop in _partibus_! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold. The wind the restless prisoner of the trees Does well for Palæstrina, one would say The mighty master’s hands were on the keys Of the Maria organ, which they play When early on some sapphire Easter morn In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne From his dark House out to the Balcony Above the bronze gates and the crowded square, Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy To toss their silver lances in the air, And stretching out weak hands to East and West In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest. Is not yon lingering orange after-glow That stays to vex the moon more fair than all Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago I knelt before some crimson Cardinal Who bare the Host across the Esquiline, And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.