And they advance with flutter, with grace, To the dance Moving on with a dainty pace, As blossoms mince it on river swells.
Over their heads their cymbals shine, Round each ankle gleams a twine Of twinkling bells -Tune twirled golden from their cells.
Every step was a tinkling sound, As they glanced in their dancing-ground, Clouds in cluster with such a sailing Float o'er the light of the wasting moon, As the cloud of their gliding veiling Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.
There was the clash of their cymbals clanging, Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging, Hovering round their dancing so fleet.-I stirred, I rustled more than meet;
Whereat they broke to the left and right, With eddying robes like aconite Blue of helm;And I beheld to the foot o' the elm.
They have not tripped those dances, betrayed to my gaze, To glad the heart of Sylvia, beholding of their maze;Through barky walls have slid away, And tricked them in their holiday, For other than for Sylvia;While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, And bear with me this burthen, For singing to Sylvia.
6.
Where its umbrage was enrooted, Sat white-suited, Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed, Spring amid her minstrelsy;There she sat amid her ladies, Where the shade is Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades'
Gloom fell thwart Persephone.
Dewy buds were interstrown Through her tresses hanging down, And her feet Were most sweet, Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.
A throng of children like to flowers were sown About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:
I looked who were that favoured company.
And one there stood Against the beamy flood Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance, Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;As see I might Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun Dispread its gracile curls of light I knew what chosen child was there in place!