Neurotic Poets

La Danseuse

She moved like silence swathed in light,
Like mist in moonshine clear;
A music that enamoured sight
Yet did elude the ear.

A rapture and a spirit clad
In motion soft as sleep;
The epitome of all things glad,
The sum of all that weep.

Her form was like a poet's mind,
By all sensations sought.
She seemed the substance of the wind,
One shape of lyric thought;

A being 'mid terrestrial things
Transcendently forlorn;
Through time bound far on gleaming wings
For some diviner bourn.

The rhythms of the swooning heart
Swayed to her sweet control;
Life in her keeping all was art,
And all of body soul.

Faint-shimmering in the roseate air
She seemed to ebb and flow
Like memories perilously fair,
And pale from long ago.

She stooped to grief's remembered tears,
Yearned to undawned delight.
Ah, beauty -- passionate from the years!
Oh, body -- wise and white!

She vanished like an evening cloud,
A sunset's radiant gleam.
She vanished. Life awhile endowed
The darkness with a dream.

The Callous Stars

The clear-eyed, callous stars look down
On darkened field and lighted town,
Slow moving through unmeasured space,
Or set in their appointed place,
From whence they shed impartial light
On sin and sorrow of the night,
Unstained, untouched by all they see,
Too bright and cold for sympathy.
We gaze upon the stars, and they
Behold us with a chilly ray,
In hard indifference to the sight
Of all we suffer in the night.
But could they feel as well as see,
The sky would droop from misery;
And hidden in a cloudy veil
The light of all the stars would fail.