Then all advance the left foot and repeat the
previous movements, half-turning to the left. Then all take two gliding
paces forward, with a single simultaneous soft clap of the hands, and
the first performance is reiterated, alternately to the right and left;
all the sandaled feet gliding together, all the supple hands waving
together, all the pliant bodies bowing and swaying together. And so
slowly, weirdly, the processional movement changes into a great round,
circling about the moon-lit court and around the voiceless crowd of
spectators.
And always the white hands sinuously wave together, as if weaving
spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward,
now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily
together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together
with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels a
sensation of hypnotism--as while striving to watch a flowing and
shimmering of water.
And this soporous allurement is intensified by a dead hush. No one
speaks, not even a spectator. And, in the long intervals between the
soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in
the trees, and the _shu-shu_ of sandals, lightly stirring the dust. Unto
what, I ask myself, may this be likened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests
some fancy of somnambulism,--dreamers, who dream themselves flying,
dreaming upon their feet.
And there comes to me the thought that I am looking at something
immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginning of
this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the
magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning has
been forgotten for innumerable years.
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