Motive - In The Nursery

We caught the tread of dancing feet

We loitered down the moonlit street

And stopped beneath the harlot’s house

Inside, above the din and fray

We heard the loud musicians play

The «Treues Liebes Herz» of Strauss

Like strange mechanical grotesques

Making fantastic arabesques

The shadows raced across the blind

We watched the ghostly dancers spin

To sound of horn and violin

Like black leaves wheeling in the wind

Like wire-pulled automatons

Slim silhouetted skeletons

Went sidling through the slow quadrille

They took each other by the hand

And danced a stately saraband;

Their laughter echoed thin and shrill

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast

Sometimes they seemed to try to sing

Sometimes a horrible marionette

Came out, and smoked its cigarette

Upon the steps like a living thing

Then turning to my love, I said

«The dead are dancing with the dead

The dust is whirling with the dust.»

But she — she heard the violin

And left my side, and entered in:

Love passed into the house of lust

Then suddenly the tune went false

The dancers wearied of the waltz

The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl

And down the long and silent street

The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet

Crept like a frightened girl