XXXIV.
THE DREAM-DANCERS.
1
No human beauty ever from the page
Of poet, or great painter's canvass, threw
Entrancement over sense; or in an age
Of living flesh and blood to fulness grew,
So beautiful and living as did come
One summer-night before me in a dream,
Pacing a dance of love-delirium
With measured motion—like a brimming stream
Which rolling in the sun we do behold,
Its broad unvarying ripples hung with gold!
2
A Man and Woman, bare as Bacchanals,
Clothed only in the robing light of pleasure,
And dancing to no music but the calls
Of sighs, which faintly with their feet kept measure;
Their mingling limbs now loosed, and now entangled,
Like clustering rose-boughs when sweet airs are blowing,
Or pure etherial fires now interspangled
By winds, and now apart in glory glowing;
Their liquid eyes into each other burning,
Their kiss-curved lips still to each other turning:
3
And thus they floated round and round, as lightly
As gold-wing'd creatures circle in the sun!
The Man still smiled rejoicing, and as brightly
As when their glorious dance was first begun;
But the ripe Woman with voluptuous feeling
Became oppress'd—a Hebe steep'd in wine
Out of Jove's cup!—and, in their midway reeling,
Sank on the bosom of her mate divine:
Then, both grew ether-pale as skies at dawn;
And o'er their forms a veil of light was drawn.
