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We caught the
tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.
Inside, above
the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The `Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.
Like strange
mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the
ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like
wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.
They took each
other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a
clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a
horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.
Then, turning
to my love, I said,
`The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.'
But she -she
heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.
Then suddenly
the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.
And down the
long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
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