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?