For A Dance

    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?

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Kansas and raised in Illinois, Masters is best known for his collection of poems entitled "Spoon River Anthology" (1915), which is a series of epitaphs of residents of the fictional small town of Spoon River. His works reflect the everyday lives and frustrations of middle America. Masters also practiced law and wrote biographies for historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Edgar Lee Masters

Father Whimsett

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Finding Of The Body

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

A Study

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Dear Old Dick

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Lonely Dancer

I had no heart to join the dance,
    I danced it all so long ago -
Ah! light-winged music out of France,
    Let other feet glide to and fro,
Weaving new patterns of romance
    For bosoms of new-fallen snow.

But leave me thus where I may hear
    The leafy rustle of the waltz,
The shell-like murmur in my ear,
    The silken whisper fairy-false
Of unseen rainbows circling near,
    And the glad shuddering of the walls.

Another dance the dancers spin,
    A shadow-dance of mystic pain,
And other partners enter in
    And dance within my lonely brain -
The swaying woodland shod in green,
    The ghostly dancers of the rain;

The lonely dancers of the sea,
    Foam-footed on the sandy bar,
The wizard dance of wind and tree,

Richard Le Gallienne

The Dancing Elf*

    I woke to daylight, and to find
    A wreath of fading vine-leaves, rough entwined,
    Lying, as dropped in hasty flight, upon my floor.

    Dropped from thy head, sweet Spirit of the night,
    Who cam'st, with footstep light,
    Blown in by the soft breeze, as thistledown,
    In through my open door.
    Whence? From the woodland, from the fields of corn,
    From flirting airily with the bright moon,
    Playing throughout the hours that go too soon,
    Ready to fly at the approach of morn,
    Thou cam'st,
    Bent on the curious quest
    To see what mortal guest
    Dwelt in the one-roomed cottage built to face the dawn.

    Thou didst pause
    Shy, timid, on the threshold, though there laughed
    The mischief in thy roguish ey...

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

The Dance

When good-nights have been prattled, and prayers have been said,
And the last little sunbeam is tucked up in bed,
Then, skirting the trees on a carpet of snow,
The elves and the fairies come out in a row.
    With a preening of wings
    They are forming in rings;
Pirouetting and setting they cross and advance
In a ripple of laughter, and pair for a dance.

And it's oh for the boom of the fairy bassoon,
And the oboes and horns as they strike up a tune,
And the twang of the harps and the sigh of the lutes,
And the clash of the cymbals, the purl of the flutes;
    And the fiddles sail in
    To the musical din,
While the chief all on fire, with a flame for a hand,
Rattles on the gay measure and stirs up his band.

With a pointing of toes and a lifting ...

R. C. Lehmann

In The Garden At The Dawn Hour

I arise in the silence of the dawn hour.
And softly steal out to the garden
Under the Favrile goblet of the dawning.
And a wind moves out of the south-land,
Like a film of silver,
And thrills with a far borne message
The flowers of the garden.
Poppies untie their scarlet hoods and wave them
To the south wind as he passes.
But the zinnias and calendulas,
In a mood of calm reserve, nod faintly
As the south wind whispers the secret
Of the dawn hour!

I stand in the silence of the dawn hour
In the garden,
As the star of morning fades.
Flying from scythes of air
The hare-bells, purples and golden glow
On the sand-hill back of the orchard
Race before the feet of the wind.
But clusters of oak-leaves over the yellow sand rim
Begin to flut...

Edgar Lee Masters

The Room Of Mirrors

I saw a room where many feet were dancing.
The ceiling and the wall were mirrors glancing
Both flames of candles and the heaven's light,
Though windows there were none for air or flight.
The room was in a form polygonal
Reached by a little door and narrow hall.
One could behold them enter for the dance,
And waken as it were out of a trance,
And either singly or with some one whirl:
The old, the young, full livers, boy and girl.
And every panel of the room was just
A mirrored door through which a hand was thrust
Here, there, around the room, a soul to seize
Whereat a scream would rise, but no surcease
Of music or of dancing, save by him
Drawn through the mirrored panel to the dim
And unknown space behind the flashing mirrors,
And by his partner struck thro...

Edgar Lee Masters

Pauline Barrett

    Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife
    And almost a year to creep back into strength,
    Till the dawn of our wedding decennial
    Found me my seeming self again.
    We walked the forest together,
    By a path of soundless moss and turf.
    But I could not look in your eyes,
    And you could not look in my eyes,
    For such sorrow was ours - the beginning of gray in your hair.
    And I but a shell of myself.
    And what did we talk of? - sky and water,
    Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts.
    And then your gift of wild roses,
    Set on the table to grace our dinner.
    Poor heart, how bravely you struggled
    To imagine and live a remembered rapture!
    Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,
    And you left...

Edgar Lee Masters