Pannyra

Deep silence holds all in a sudden trance

As golden-heeled Pannyra treads the dance.

The flute invites her with its silver sound,

Fold upon fold her white veils gird her round,

Forward she darts; her light stops cross and twine;

Her circling arms in movement serpentine

Shake the thin gauze into fantastic curves;

It billows out, and leaps, and spreads, and swerves

In rhythmic splendor over breast and thigh;

She seems a flower, a flame, a butterfly;

Breathless they stare; she sways, she floats, she swims,

The madness of the dance invades her limbs,

Wilder she whirls in ever swifter flight,

Aureoled in fire by the bright torches’ light,

Then sudden stops—and in the silent hall

They watch the waving draperies slowly fall

In narrowing spirals, and, subsiding, flow

Round her high-pointed breast and limbs of snow,

Till in a light divine the golden-heeled

Pannyra’s naked beauty stands revealed. 

Albert Samain