THE DANCING ELF*

  I WOKE to daylight, and to find
  A wreath of fading vine-leaves, rough entwined,
  Lying, as dropped in hasty flight, upon my floor.

  Dropped from thy head, sweet Spirit of the night,
  Who cam'st, with footstep light,
  Blown in by the soft breeze, as thistledown,
  In through my open door.
  Whence? From the woodland, from the fields of corn,
  From flirting airily with the bright moon,
  Playing throughout the hours that go too soon,
  Ready to fly at the approach of morn,
  Thou cam'st,
  Bent on the curious quest
  To see what mortal guest
  Dwelt in the one-roomed cottage built to face the
      dawn.

  Thou didst pause
  Shy, timid, on the threshold, though there laughed
  The mischief in thy roguish eyes, then soft,
  Thou crosst the room on tiptoe to my bed,
  One finger on thy lip,
  Cautious to make no slip,
  —I saw the wreath of vine-leaves on thy head.

  Then with a twirl
  Thinking I slept,
  And a joyous whirl,
  Into a dance leapt
  The careless spirit too long restrained;
  The purest dancing,
  Feet sometimes chancing
  To touch the ground;
  Then starting up with a fresh high bound,
  To hang for a moment poised in the air,
  And a glimpse of white teeth glancing
  And a laughing face beneath tossing hair;
  An orgy, a revel, a living joy,
  Embodied in one slim woodland boy,
  Dancing forward, backward, now here, now there,
  Swaying to every impulse unconstrained.

  Thou wert too pure for Bacchus, and too young for
      Pan.
  What wert thou? In the daytime dost thou sleep
  In a cave
  Like a grave,
  Till the moon calls thee, in the sleep of man,
  To thy light revels through the sombre deep
  Wood's shadows to a space among the trees,
  Where the breeze
  Makes music through the branches for thy dance,
  And the large-eyed and silent deer stand round
  Peeping through tree-trunks, and each forest sound
  —The trickling stream's
  Murmur in its dreams,
  The shepherd's pipe, far-echoing by chance,—
  Melt all for thee
  To one soft harmony,
  While for the lighting of thy mossy slope
  The moon thy lover sheds an opal glow,
  Pale silver-green, the colour of the leaves
  Of olive-trees,
  The limelight on the stage for Youth and Joy and
      Hope?
  And at the first rose menace of the dawn
  Must thou go,
  Fly to thy cave, thou little pagan Faun?

  The fount of joy was bubbling in thine eyes,
  Dancing was in thy feet,
  And on thy lips a laugh that never dies,
  Unutterably sweet.
  Dance on! for ever young, for ever fair,
  Lightfooted as a frightened bounding deer,
  Thy wreath of vine-leaves twisted in thy hair,
  Through all the changing seasons of the year,
  And tread, to Autumn's gorgeous hymn of praise,
  And to the happy Spring's light lilt of pleasure,
  And to the dirgeful chant of Winter's days,
  And ever varying, ever suited measure;
  And in the Summer, when the reeking earth
  Swings a vast censer, as it is most meet,
  Praise thou for lavish gifts, new hopes, new birth,
  Praise with the dancing of thy tireless feet!

  I woke to daylight, and to find
  A wreath of fading vine-leaves, rough entwined,
  Lying, as dropped in hasty flight, upon my floor.

* Reprinted by kind permission of the Editor of the "English Review," where it first appeared in August 1913

CONSTANTINOPLE

DHJI-HAN-GHIR. For H.N.

  FOR years it had been neglected,
  This wilderness garden of ours,
  And its ruin had shone reflected
  In its pools through abandoned hours.
  For none had cared for its beauty
  Till we came, the strangers, the Giaours,
  And none had thought of a duty
  Towards its squandering flowers.

  Of broken wells and fountains
  There were half a dozen or more,
  And, beyond the sea, the mountains
  Of that far Bithynian shore
  Were blue in the purple distance
  And white was the cap they wore,
  And never in our existence
  Had life seemed brighter before!

  And the fruit-trees grew in profusion,
  Quince and pomegranate and wine,
  And the roses in rich confusion
  With the lilac intertwine,
  And the Banksia rose, the creeper,
  Which is golden like yellow wine,
  Is surely more gorgeous and deeper
  In this garden of mine and thine.

  And the little bright flowers in the grasses,
  Cyclamen, daffodil,
  Are crushed by the foot that passes,
  But seem to grow thicker still;
  In the cool grey fig-tree's shadows
  They grow at their own free will,
  In the grass as in English meadows,
  On the slope of an English hill.

  Is it best, when the lone flute-player
  Wanders by with his strange little tune
  And the muezzin sings out for prayer
  Thrice daily his Arabic rune:
  Once, when the sunset has faded,
  Once in the brilliant noon,
  Or once in the daybreak, rose-shaded.
  A farewell to the dying moon?

LEBLEBIDJI*

  I KNOW so well the busy cries
  That echo through the quarter
  Till daylight into evening dies
  And stars shine in the water,
  So dear they have become to me,
  Leblebidji! leblebidji!

  On peaceful English country nights
  Their rapid gay succession
  And all the sea-reflected lights
  Will pass from my possession,
  But never from my memory,
  Leblebidji! leblebidji!

  Past English evening scents and sounds,
  Past English church-bells ringing,
  The Turkish watchman on his rounds,
  The Turkish pedlar singing
  Through narrow streets above the sea
  "Leblebidji! leblebidji,"

  Will surely pierce a ghostly way,
  The music underlying,
  And in the shades of falling day
  As in the distance dying,
  A little call will come to me,
  "Leblebidji!" …

* Little white beans

THE MUEZZIN

  ABOVE the city at his feet,
  Above the dome, above the sea,
  He rises unconfined and free
  To break upon the noonday heat.

  He turns around the parapet,
  Black-robed against the marble tower;
  His singing gains or loses power
  In pacing round the minaret.

  A brother to the singing birds
  He never knew restraining walls,
  But freely rises, freely falls
  The rhythm of the sacred words.

  I would that it to me were given
  To climb each day the muezzin's stair
  And in the warm and silent air
  To sing my heart out into Heaven.

THE GREEK HAN

  A SUNNY