The Child-Dancers

A bomb has fallen over Notre Dame:  
Germans have burned another Belgian town:  
Russians quelled in the east: England in qualm:  
 
I closed my eyes, and laid the paper down.  
 
Gray ledge and moor-grass and pale bloom of light  
By pale blue seas!  
What laughter of a child world-sprite,  
Sweet as the horns of lone October bees,  
Shrills the faint shore with mellow, odd delight?  
What elves are these  
In smocks gray-blue as sea and ledge,  
Dancing upon the silvered edge  
Of darkness—each ecstatic one  
Making a happy orison,  
With shining limbs, to the low-sunken sun?—  
See: now they cease  
Like nesting birds from flight:  
Demure and debonair  
They troop beside their hostess' chair  
To make their bedtime courtesies:  
 "Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht!  
 Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!"  
 
What far-gleaned lives are these  
Linked in one holy family of art?—  
Dreams: dreams once Christ and Plato dreamed:  
How fair their happy shades depart!  
 
Dear God! how simple it all seemed,  
Till once again  
Before my eyes the red type quivered: Slain:  
Ten thousand of the enemy.—  
Then laughter! laughter from the ancient sea  
Sang in the gloaming: Athens! Galilee!  
And elfin voices called from the extinguished light:—  
 "Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht!  
 Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!"