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A Plea for the Old Music

(To André Polah)

Play me some old gavotte,

Or minuet—

To-day I would forget,

And live in the Forgot:

I want to hear the dead folk dancing,

I want to see the dead eyes glancing,

I want dead ladies and dead lords,

The wigs, the furbelows, the swords;

I weary of the sansculotte,

The unkempt northern hordes,

That pour their muddy streams

Across our dreams,

Fouling the sacred fire

With bestial desire,

Knowing no law

Only to glut the sensual appetite,

Or cram the brutish maw.

Yea! Master of the magic strings,

Bring back the fair old-fashioned things,

The gallant bows, the curtseys sweeping,

Of that brave world that's gone a-sleeping,

Where love was none the less a passion

Because fine manners were the fashion.

Play me some old gavotte,

I weary of the carmagnole,

I weary of the sansculotte,

With his Pan-Slavic "soul"—

Bring back pavane and rigadoon,

And Watteau and the rising moon.