Oh, proud Russian dancer: praise for your dancing. No clean human passion my rhyme would arraign. You dance for Apollo with noble devotion, A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane. But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit More white than Apollo and all of his train. I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead, Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain. I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain. In Praise of Songs that Die After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines and Newspapers Ah, they are passing, passing by, Wonderful songs, but born to die! Cries from the infinite human seas, Waves thrice-winged with harmonies. Here I stand on a pier in the foam Seeing the songs to the beach go home, Dying in sand while the tide flows back, As it flowed of old in its fated track. Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear Your own foam-children dying near: Is there no refuge-house of song, No home, no haven where songs belong? Oh, precious hymns that come and go! You perish, and I love you so! Factory Windows are always Broken Factory windows are always broken. Somebody's always throwing bricks, Somebody's always heaving cinders, Playing ugly Yahoo tricks. Factory windows are always broken. Other windows are let alone. No one throws through the chapel-window The bitter, snarling, derisive stone. Factory windows are always broken. Something or other is going wrong. Something is rotten--I think, in Denmark. _End of the factory-window song_. To Mary Pickford Moving-picture Actress (On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.) Mary Pickford, doll divine, Year by year, and every day At the moving-picture play, You have been my valentine. Once a free-limbed page in hose, Baby-Rosalind in flower, Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour How our reverent passion rose, How our fine desire you won. Kitchen-wench another day, Shapeless, wooden every way. Next, a fairy from the sun. Once you walked a grown-up strand Fish-wife siren, full of lure, Snaring with devices sure Lads who murdered on the sand. But on most days just a child Dimpled as no grown-folk are, Cold of kiss as some north star, Violet from the valleys wild. Snared as innocence must be, Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead-- At the end of tortures dread Roaring cowboys set you free. Fly, O song, to her to-day, Like a cowboy cross the land. Snatch her from Belasco's hand And that prison called Broadway. All the village swains await One dear lily-girl demure, Saucy, dancing, cold and pure, Elf who must return in state. Blanche Sweet Moving-picture Actress