Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments By Frederic W. H. Myers: Edited by his Wife Eveleen Myers |
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THE BALLERINA'S PROGRESS, OR THE POETRY OF MOTION |
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 | Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments |  |
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THE BALLERINA'S PROGRESS, OR THE POETRY OF MOTION
Iri, decus coeli, quis te mihi nubibus actam?—
I. The School
With mantling cheek, with palpitating breast,See the sweet novice glide among the rest!
O see her from those timorous shoulders fair
Fling back the tossing torrent of her hair!
See half diaphanous and half displayed
The shy limbs gleam, the magic of the maid!
Nor at first seeing wouldst thou deem it true
Such fairy feet such daring deeds could do,
Or Art inborn the maiden shame dispel
From those sweet eyes, that aspect lovable;—
Yet little by little, as in her ears begin
The thrill and scream of flute and violin,—
O little by little and in a wondrous way
The hid soul hearkens and the limbs obey;—
As though the starry nature, quenched and hid
Between things impotent and things forbid,
Found thus an air and thus a passion, thus
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And dared the best and did it, and became
Vocal, a flying and irradiant flame.
Thus when the Pythian maid no more can bear
The god intolerable and thundering air,
Nor shifting colour and heaving heart contain
Longer the quenchless prophesying pain,—
The more she strives from out her breast to throw
The indwelling monarch of the lute and bow,
The more, the more will mastering Phœbus tire
Her proud lips frenetic and eyes of fire,
Till last, in Delphic measure, Delphic tone,
Bows the wild head, and speaks, and is his own.
II. The Stage
Then flame on flame the immense proscænium glowsWith magic counterchange of gold and rose,
Then roar on roar, undying and again,
Crash the great bars of that prodigious strain,—
Fire flashed on fire and sound on thunder hurled
Bear from their midst the Wonder of the World.
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The very daughter and delight of air,—
Lightly she comes, preluding, lightly starts
The breathless rapture to a thousand hearts,
The high flutes hush to meet her, and the drum
Thro' all his deep self trembles till she come:—
Then with a rush, as though the notes had known
After long hope their empress and their own,
She and the music bound, and high and free
Thro' light and air the music leaps and she:—
So bright, so coruscating, Iris so
Slides the long arch of her effulgent bow;
Rose in her wake and azure on her way
A thousand tints bedew the Olympian day;—
She touches earth, and all those hues are one,
And her unbent bow springs into the sun.
| Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments | |