How a Little Girl Danced

Dedicated to Lucy Bates     (Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.)          Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer,          Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain.          I know a dancer, I know a dancer,          Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain:          Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,          With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.          Oh, thrice-painted dancer, vaudeville dancer,          Sad in your spangles, with soul all astrain,          I know a dancer, I know a dancer,          Whose laughter and weeping are spiritual gain,          A pure-hearted, high-hearted maiden evangel,          With strength the dark cynical earth to disdain.          Flowers of bright Broadway, you of the chorus,          Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain:          I turn to a sister of Sainted Cecilia,          A white bird escaping the earth's tangled skein: -          The music of God is her innermost brooding,          The whispering angels her footsteps sustain.          Oh, proud Russian dancer:    praise for your dancing.          No clean human passion my rhyme would arraign.          You dance for Apollo with noble devotion,          A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane.          But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit          More white than Apollo and all of his train.          I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead,          Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain.          I know a dancer, I know a dancer,          Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain:          Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,          With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.