To Salomé at St. James’s

FLOWER of the ballet’s nightly mirth,
    Pleased with a trinket or a gown,
Eternal as eternal earth
    You dance the centuries down.

For you, my plaything, slight and light,
    Capricious, petulant and proud,
With whom I sit and sup to-night
    Among the tawdry crowd,

Are she whose swift and sandalled feet
    And postured girlish beauty won
A pagan prize, for you unmeet,
    The head of Baptist John.

And after ages, when you sit
    A princess less in birth than power,
Freed from the theatre’s fume and heat
    To kill an idle hour,

                                                Here

Here in the babbling room agleam
    With scarlet lips and naked arms
And such rich jewels as beseem
    The painted damzel’s charms,

Even now your tired and subtle face
    Bears record to the wondrous time
When from your limbs’ lascivious grace
    Sprang forth your splendid crime.

And though none deem it true, of those
    Who watch you in our banal age
Like some stray fairy glide and pose
    Upon a London stage,

Yet I to whom your frail caprice
    Turns for the moment ardent eyes
Have seen the strength of love release
    Your sleeping memories.

I too am servant to your glance,
    I too am bent beneath your sway,
My wonder ! My desire ! who dance
    Men’s heads and hearts away.

Sweet arbitress of love and death,
    Unchanging on time’s changing sands,
You hold more lightly than a breath
    The world between your hands !

The Yellow Book—Vol. III. G