Because you are fair as souls of the lost are fair, <br />And your eyelids laugh with desire, and your laughing feet <br />Are winged with desire, and your hands are wanton, and sweet <br />Is the promise of love in your lips, and the rose in your hair <br />Sweet, unfaded, a promise sweet to be sought, <br />And the maze you tread is as old as the world is old, <br />Therefore you hold me, body and soul, in your hold, <br />And time, as you dance, is not, and the world is as nought. <br />You dance, and I know the desire of all flesh, and the pain <br />Of all longing of body for body; you beckon, repel, <br />Entreat, and entice, and bewilder, and build up the spell, <br />Link by link, with deliberate steps, of a flower-soft chain. <br />You laugh, and I know the despair, and you smile, and I know <br />The delight of your love, and the flower in your hair is a star. <br />It brightens, I follow; it fades, and I see it afar; <br />You pause: I awake; have I dreamt? was it longer ago <br />Than a dream that I saw you smile? for you turn, you turn, <br />As a startled beast in the toils: it is you that entreat, <br />Desperate, hating the coils that have fastened your feet, <br />The desire you desired that has come; and your lips now yearn, <br />And your hands now ache, and your feet faint for love. <br />Longing has taken hold even on you, <br />You, the witch of desire; and you pause, and anew <br />Your stillness moves, and you pause, and your hands move. <br />Time, as you dance, is as nought, and the moments seem <br />Swift as eternity; time is at end, for you close <br />Eyes and lips and hands in sudden repose; <br />You smile: was it all no longer ago than a dream?<br /><br />Arthur Symons<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-a-gitana-dancing/