MUSICAL COURIER

New York City, New York, U.S.A.

3 AUGUST 1916

(page 41)

POEMS TO MAUD ALLAN

MAUD ALLAN.

(From a sketch by Charles Buchel.)

Few dancers have been made the subjects of as many poetic odes as have fallen to the lot of Maud Allan. Here are a few of them:

She lives not in our world of common things,

Nor breathes the common air of mortal men;

Her careless feet are wandering in the glen

Of some forgotten past, while round them clings

Each loving blade and flower. Wild pigeon’s wings

Wave round her head, and from each brake and fen

Shy woodland creatures far from human ken

Feed from her hand and listen while she sings.

dream of what was once and is no more!

Not in the waking visions of the day,

Not to the heart that yearns, the eyelids sore

With weary watching, comes the perfect ray,

Thou livest only in the poet’s lore,

With men who dwell apart and dream always

W. L. COURTNEY, of London

Sculptor of that most gracious theme,

Yourself,

You carve the galleries of remembrance

Like Egypt, with a deathless attitude.

From your perpetual triumph, cease

And read me as a steadfast monument . . . behold

The moving moments stayed:

The queen you are, the priestess, and the slave,

As, hand to hand, they poise

Perfection to itself—

A woman’s beauty and a poet’s soul.

HORACE HOLLEY.

Cactus of pain and sand

Of barreness!—

Yet even here shall stand

Beauty and bless

With her unfailing hand

And keep me brave

Under the desert-sky

And guide and save . . .

Till even I

Shall walk with her untroubled on the grave.

WITTER BYNNER.

Spring, smiling, breathes the zephyrs of her feet,

For all her body is the Soul of Spring;

And all the life of Nature, set aswing,

Glows Pentecostal to the Paraclete.

Then, savage glories ravishing the sweet,

Her serpent arms make sigils menacing

The sacramental death of some strange king.

Now Sib enkindles her, and now Nuit!

Even as the glass wherein God sees His face,

She changes momently from grace to grace,

A flower, a tree, a moon, a bird, a breeze,

A heart—oh let me swoon amazed, enrapt,

That in her beauty my life’s spindle, snapped,

May blot my being in Eternity’s.

ALEISTER CROWLEY.

Attuned strings that in the hush of dawn

Plead with the reedy oboes yearningly

To be transfigured into mortal grace,

Thy strains bewildering have called to life

A naiad blown on thy wild melody

Adown the dim blue misty lanes of morn.

Alluring zephyrs of awakening spring

Breathe rapturous round her lissome figure light,

As at her touch the burgeoning blossoms smile;

And sad funereal purple robes of woe

Trail in the haunting sorrow of her tread

To death’s seductive strains inconsolate;

And timbrels and shrill pipes surge passionately

With all the frenzy of Salome’s plea

In her fierce tempest of exotic woe.

For joy and sorrow in alternate strife

Contend before us in enamored spells

Of beauty with the magic of her dance.

Egypt and Greece and Persia, exorcised,

Float by in rhythms of her sinuous grace;

The passion of the sea, the clouds, the wind,

Embodied in her presence, sweep along

In surging cadences that storm our hearts.

Then wilder, swifter, panting unto death

With blare of brass and the wild beat of drums

The mad Bacchante rushes into night.

CHARLES KEELER.