Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MALICE-DANCE, by JOHN COWPER POWYS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MALICE-DANCE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: An intolerable singing
Last Line: Round that dial of the moon!
Subject(s): Beauty; Dancing & Dancers; Death; Dreams; Love; Moon; Singing & Singers; Dead, The; Nightmares


An intolerable singing
From an ancient haunted lawn
Where the ghost-moths whitely winging
Cross a moon-dial forlorn,
Drew me from you as you trifled
With the jasmin in your hair,
Dreaming that your beauty rifled
All my sense and held me there;
But I left you; and, escaping
With a lost tune in my head,
Set my memory reshaping
The old dances of the dead.
And the intolerable singing
Heard across that haunted lawn,
Drew me to the ghost-moths winging,
Round that moon-dial forlorn.
Over me the clouds were running
Races with the naked stars,
And dark Yews were making cunning
Love to whispering Deodars.
And the ghost-moths drugged my reason,
And I danced to that old tune
Malice dances full of treason
Round that dial of the moon!





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