| We caught the tread of dancing feet
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| We loitered down the moonlit street
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| And stopped beneath the harlot’s house
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| Inside, above the din and fray
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| We heard the loud musicians play
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| The «Treues Liebes Herz» of Strauss
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| Like strange mechanical grotesques
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| Making fantastic arabesques
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| The shadows raced across the blind
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| We watched the ghostly dancers spin
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| To sound of horn and violin
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| Like black leaves wheeling in the wind
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| Like wire-pulled automatons
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| Slim silhouetted skeletons
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| Went sidling through the slow quadrille
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| They took each other by the hand
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| And danced a stately saraband;
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| Their laughter echoed thin and shrill
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| Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
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| A phantom lover to her breast
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| Sometimes they seemed to try to sing
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| Sometimes a horrible marionette
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| Came out, and smoked its cigarette
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| Upon the steps like a living thing
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| Then turning to my love, I said
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| «The dead are dancing with the dead
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| The dust is whirling with the dust.»
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| But she — she heard the violin
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| And left my side, and entered in:
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| Love passed into the house of lust
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| Then suddenly the tune went false
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| The dancers wearied of the waltz
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| The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl
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| And down the long and silent street
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| The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet
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| Crept like a frightened girl |