With head and face downbent
On the lady’s head and face intent: 
For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
The lady sat between her knees
And o’er them the lady’s clasped hands met,
And on those hands her chin was set,
And her upturned face met the face of the crone
Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
As if she could double and quadruple 530
At pleasure the play of either pupil
        —­Very like, by her hands’ slow fanning,
As up and down like a gor-crow’s flappers
They moved to measure, or bell-clappers. 
        I said, “Is it blessing, is it banning,
Do they applaud you or burlesque you—­
        Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?”
But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
        At once I was stopped by the lady’s expression: 
For it was life her eyes were drinking 540
>From the crone’s wide pair above unwinking,
—­Life’s pure fire received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving,
—­Life, that filling her, passed redundant
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
        As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure, 550
Bounding as the bosom bounded. 
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened: 
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
        Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped 560
        From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world: 
Word took word as hand takes hand
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the unbroken thread,
The Gipsy said: 
“And so at last we find my tribe. 
        And so I set thee in the midst,
And to one and all of them describe
        What thou saidst and what thou didst, 570
Our long and terrible journey through,
And all thou art ready to say and do
In the trials that remain: 
I trace them the vein and the other vein
That meet on thy brow and part again,
Making our rapid mystic mark;
        And I bid my people prove and probe
        Each eye’s profound and glorious globe
Till they detect the kindred spark
In those depths so dear and dark, 580
Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
Circling over the midnight sea. 
And on that round young cheek of thine
        I make them recognize the tinge,
As when of the costly scarlet wine
        They drip so much as will impinge