ng it a tribute
Unlike all the things
That Kings and Queens have laid before her feet;
And wishing somehow she might know
About the price
The cub reporter paid
To see Pavlowa dance.

And then by trick of time,
We came together at the Hippodrome;
And every day I saw her dance.
One morning in the darkened wings
I saw a big-eyed woman in a filmy thing
Go through the exercises
Athletes use when training for a team;
And from a stage-hand learned
That this Pavlowa, incomparable one,
Out of every day spent hours
On elementary practice steps.
And now somehow
I can not find the heart
To tell Pavlowa of the price I paid
To see her dance.

THE OLD CHORUS MAN

He's played with Booth,
He's shared applause with Jefferson,
He's run the gamut of the soul
Imparting substance to the shadow men
Masters have fashioned with their quills
And set upon the boards.
Great men-of-iron were his favored roles,
(Once he essayed Napoleon).
And now, unknowing, he plays his greatest tragedy:
Dressed in a garb to look like service clothes,
Cheeks lit by fire--of make-up box,
He marches with a squad of sallow youths
And bare-kneed girls,
Keeping step to tattoo of the drums
Beat by some shapely maids in tights,
While close by in the silent streets
There march long files of purposed men
Who go to death, perhaps,
For the same cause he travesties
Within the playhouse walls.

BLUCH LANDOLF'S TALE

When I was old enough to walk
I rode a circus horse;
My first teeth held me swinging from a high trapeze.
About the age young men go out to colleges
I trudged the sanded vasts of Northern Africa,
Top-mounter in a nomad Arab tumbling troupe.
I was Christian, that is white and Infidel,
So old Abdullah took me in his tent
And stripping off my white man's clothes
Painted me with dye made from the chestnut hulls,
Laughing the while about the potency of juice
That would prove armour 'gainst some zealot's scimitar.
Four camels made our caravan
And these we also used for "props."
When we played a Morocco town
The chieftain met us at the hamlet's edge
Asked of Abdullah what his mission there,
Then let us enter
He leading our caravan to the chieftain's hut,
Where we sat upon the sand
The thirty odd of us
Surrounded by as many lesser chiefs.
The hookah solemnly was passed around
And then the hamlet chief would speak;
"Stranger, why have you forsaken home
And drawn believers after you,
You bear no spices, oil, or woven cloth,
No jewels