Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet Move on unshod with steel! She is not skating fleet On toe and heel, But only tip-toe dances in a whirl, A lovely dancing-girl, Upon the frozen surface of the stream. Without a wonder, it would seem, She could not keep her sway, The balance of her limbs Sure on the musical, iced river-way That, sparkling, dims Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.
She dances mid the sumptuous whiteness set Of winter’s sunniest noon; She dances as the sun-rays that forget In winter sunset falleth soon To sheer sunset: She dances with a languor through the frost As she had never lost, In lands where there is snow, The Orient’s immeasurable glow.
Who is this dancer white-- A creature slight, Weaving the East upon a stream of ice, That in a trice Might trip the dance and fling the dancer down? Does she not know deeps under ice can drown?
This is Salome, in a western land, An exile with Herodias, her mother, With Herod and Herodias: And she has sought the river’s icy mass, Companioned by no other, To dance upon the ice--each hand Held, as a snow-bird’s wings, In heavy poise. Ecstatic, with no noise, Athwart the ice her dream, her spell she flings; And Winter in a rapture of delight Flings up and down the spangles of her light.
Oh, hearken, hearken!... Ice and frost, From these cajoling motions freed, Have straight given heed To Will more firm. In their obedience Their masses dense Are riven as by a sword.... Where is the Vision by the snow adored? The Vision is no more Seen from the noontide shore. Oh, fearful crash of thunder from the stream, As there were thunder-clouds upon its wave! Could nothing save The dancer in the noontide beam? She is engulphed and all the dance is done. Bright leaps the noontide sun-- But stay, what leaps beneath it? A gold head, That twinkles with its jewels bright As water-drops.... O murdered Baptist of the severed head, Her head was caught and girded tight, And severed by the ice-brook sword, and sped In dance that never stops. It skims and hops Across the ice that rasped it. Smooth and gay, And void of care, It takes its sunny way: But underneath the golden hair, And underneath those jewel-sparks, Keen noontide marks A little face as grey as evening ice; Lips, open in a scream no soul may hear Eyes fixed as they beheld the silver plate That they at Macherontis once beheld; While the hair trails, although so fleet and nice The motion of the head as subjugate To its own law: yet in the face what fear, To what excess compelled!