GOBLIN DANCE

First there was but the moon

        And the black‑tramelled trees

In the lunar lagoon

        Of the forgotten breeze.

Then some unseen thing stirred

        Where the moon‑silence snowed

And a vague whirl unheard

        Vacantly tip‑toed.

Slowly, idly, alone,

        Beyond the eyes of sight,

Somewhere invisibly shown,

        They danced their delight.

Their far vagueness wound

        Round the heart a pain,

A phantom fear found

        Voluble and vain.

The heart remembered lives

        Before loves and homes,

Whose rare memory revives

        Only when this dance comes.

A wish for a vague thing soon,

        A loosened sense of selves,

A thing in the soul like moon,

        Aught in the hopes like elves -

Tip‑toe aerial gliding

        Shadow‑lunar blent,

Bending, mingling, hiding,

        To and fro they went.

Left and right, belonging

        To no place, they swayed.

A low pipe, like longing,

        To their dancing played.

There, in the silence dropped

        Like a thing on the ground,

Whirled they awhile, then stopped,

        Then renewed their round,

Till with their slowing turns

        The cold air grows more bare.

Then the mere moonlight returns

        And there had been nothing there.