The Poetry Corner

For A Dance

By Edgar Lee Masters

There is in the dance The joy of children on a May day lawn. The fragments of old dreams and dead romance Come to us from the dancers who are gone. What strains of ancient blood Move quicker to the music's passionate beat? I see the gulls fly over a shadowy flood And Munster fields of barley and of wheat. And I see sunny France, And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light, And faces, faces, yearning for the dance With wistful eyes that look on our delight. They live through us again And we through them, who wish for lips and eyes Wherewith to feel, not fancy, the old pain Passed with reluctance through the centuries To us, who in the maze Of dancing and hushed music woven afresh Amid the shifting mirrors of hours and days Know not our spirit, neither know our flesh; Nor what ourselves have been, Through the long way that brought us to the dance: I see a little green by Camolin And odorous orchards blooming in Provence. Two listen to the roar Of waves moon-smitten, where no steps intrude. Who knows what lips were kissed at Laracor? Or who it was that walked through Burnham wood?