THE house is bright with lights and lights, <br />Like a palace in the Arabian Nights, <br />Lights in festoons and lights in clusters, <br />In chandeliers and crystal lustres; <br />And all the length of the stairs' broad way, <br />Tapestries green and pink and gray <br />Tell a story of ladies' bowers <br />Hung with apples and paved with flowers; <br />And beyond, an open arch discloses <br />An inner garden of palms and roses, <br />With lines of lilies against the walls, <br />And a fountain that falls - and waits - and falls. <br />And from the ballroom comes the beat <br />Of dance music and dancing feet, <br />And through the doorways of gold and glass <br />Figures of dancers pass and pass, <br />Lovely creatures in dripping laces, <br />And all have sad, unhopeful faces. <br />One person only yields to joy, <br />And he is a footman - a round-faced boy - <br />Stiff in a livery of black and green, <br />And he laughs at something heard or seen, <br />Laughs with a loud and lonely gladness, <br />Laughs perhaps at the dancers' sadness; <br />He only seemed for an instant gay, <br />And he was instantly sent away.<br /><br />Alice Duer Miller<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-party-14/
