e you out of his desire.
Waken from the sleep of clay
And rise and dance the world away.

GIOVANNI MALATESTA AT RIMINI

Giovanni Malatesta, the lame old man,
Walking one night, as he was used, being old,
Upon the grey seashore at Rimini,
And thinking dimly of those two whom love
Led to one death, and his less happy soul
For which Cain waited, heard a seagull scream,
Twice, like Francesca; for he struck but twice.
At that, rage thrust down pity; for it seemed
As if those windy bodies with the sea's
Unfriended heart within them for a voice
Had turned to mock him, and he called them friends,
And he had found a wild peace hearing them
Cry senseless cries, halloing to the wind.
He turned his back upon the sea; he saw
The ragged teeth of the sharp Apennines
Shut on the sea; his shadow in the moon
Ploughed up a furrow with an iron staff
In the hard sand, and thrust a long lean chin
Outward and downward, and thrust out a foot,
And leaned to follow after. As he saw
His crooked knee go forward under him
And after it the long straight iron staff,
"The staff," he thought, "is Paolo: like that staff
And like that knee we walked between the sun,
And her unmerciful eyes"; and the old man,
Thinking of God, and how God ruled the world,
And gave to one man beauty for a snare
And a warped body to another man,
Not less than he in soul, not less than he
In hunger and capacity for joy,
Forgot Francesca's evil and his wrong,
His anger, his revenge, that memory,
Wondering at man's forgiveness of the old
Divine injustice, wondering at himself:
Giovanni Malatesta judging God.

LA MELINITE: MOULIN ROUGE

Olivier Metra's Waltz of Roses
Sheds in a rhythmic shower
The very petals of the flower;
And all is roses,
The rouge of petals in a shower.

Down the long hall the dance returning
Rounds the full circle, rounds
The perfect rose of lights and sounds,
The rose returning
Into the circle of its rounds.

Alone, apart, one dancer watches
Her mirrored, morbid grace;
Before the mirror, face to face,
Alone she watches
Her morbid, vague, ambiguous grace.

Before the mirror's dance of shadows
She dances in a dream,
And she and they together seem
A dance of shadows,
Alike the shadows of a dream.

The orange-rosy lamps are trembling
Between the robes that turn;
In ruddy flowers of flame that burn
The lights are trembling:
The shadows and the dancers turn.

And, enigmatically smiling,
In the m