The Dance of Love

Written for Madame Liza Lehmann

The music sighs and slumbers,

It stirs and sleeps again . . .

Hush, it wakes and weeps and murmurs

Like a woman's heart in pain;

Now it laughs and calls and coaxes,

Like a lover in the night,

Now it pants with sudden longing,

Now it sobs with spent delight.

Like bright and wind-blown lilies,

The dancers sway and shine,

Swift in a rhythmic circle,

Soft in a rhythmic line;

Their lithe limbs gleam like amber

Thro' their veils of golden gauze,

As they glide and bend and beckon,

As they wheel and wind and pause.

The voices of lutes and cymbals

Fail on the failing breeze,

And the midnight's soul grows weary

With the scent of the champak trees;

But the subtle feet of the dancers

In a long, returning chain,

Wake in the heart of lovers

Love's ecstasy and pain.