If the Princess Ask a Ballet

 

Bring me a fable out of the old time,

And shape it into drama swift and tense,

With passions, that inspired folk can mime,

And beauty, to exalt it above sense.

 

Then, let the Musick fit it to his tunes,

So that its slightest moment shall be sweet;

O, all the nightingales of English Junes

Should fill the music for these flying feet.

 

Then, let the painter best for soul and hand

Fashion a bright perfection for the scene,

In Troy, or Camelot, or Faery Land,

And dress, as for the Faery King and Queen.

 

Then, bid the dancers to the sacred stone

In Golders Green, beneath whose marble now

Lie the shed feathers of the Swan-Bird flown.

There, thinking of her sweetness, let them vow,

 

That, when they dance, they will so truly hide

All touch of the corruption of things base

That all who see will stay on Beauty’s side

Forever, only through the dancer’s grace.

 

Then, thinking of her glory, let them lay

White violets or blue on her dear dust,

And murmur to her as they come away

(For beauty prayed-to helps, and ever must):

 

“White Swan, through whose dear flight

Earth’s millions knew delight,

Help us who kneel

So to move, so to feel,

That this new truth perceived

May live and be believed,

 

May be beauty unended

To friendless souls as to friended,

Beauty, going on and on.

Help us, white lovely Swan.”

 

Thus consecrate to spirit let them go

Revivified, to study and rehearse,

Careless of draughts that through the coulisses blow,

Patient beneath the tried producer’s curse.

 

Till, at the last, when costume, dance and light

Are all made perfect and the scene is set,

And some sweet prelude ushers in the Night,

May Time, the all-forgetting, not forget,

 

No, but remember ever what they dance,

As sunlight in this stony world of ours,

As Joy and Soul’s Forgiveness and Romance,

And when the curtain falls may there be flowers.

 

John Masefield