The Child-Dancers

A BOMB has fallen over Notre Dame:

Germans have burned another Belgian town:

Russians quelled in the east: England in qualm:

I closed my eyes, and laid the paper down.

Gray ledge and moor-grass and pale bloom of light

By pale blue seas!

What laughter of a child world-sprite,

Sweet as the horns of lone October bees,

Shrills the faint shore with mellow, odd delight?

What elves are these

In smocks gray-blue as sea and ledge,

Dancing upon the silvered edge

Of darkness—each ecstatic one

Making a happy orison,

With shining limbs, to the low-sunken sun?—

See: now they cease

Like nesting birds from flight:

Demure and debonair

They troop beside their hostess’ chair

To make their bedtime courtesies:

“Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht!

Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!”

What far-gleaned lives are these

Linked in one holy family of art?—

Dreams: dreams once Christ and Plato dreamed:

How fair their happy shades depart!

Dear God! how simple it all seemed,

Till once again

Before my eyes the red type quivered: Slain:

Ten thousand of the enemy.—

Then laughter! laughter from the ancient sea

Sang in the gloaming: Athens! Galilee!

And elfin voices called from the extinguished light:—

“Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht!

Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!”