Read it through once

And now, what took place at the very first of all, I cannot tell, as I never could learn it: Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall On that little head of hers and burn it If she knew how she came to drop so soundly Asleep of a sudden, and there continue The whole time, sleeping as profoundly {500} As one of the boars my father would pin you ‘Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison, --Jacynth, forgive me the comparison! But where I begin my own narration Is a little after I took my station To breathe the fresh air from the balcony, And, having in those days a falcon eye, To follow the hunt through the open country, From where the bushes thinlier crested The hillocks, to a plain where’s not one tree. {510} When, in a moment, my ear was arrested By--was it singing, or was it saying, Or a strange musical instrument playing In the chamber?--and to be certain I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain, And there lay Jacynth asleep, Yet as if a watch she tried to keep, In a rosy sleep along the floor With her head against the door; While in the midst, on the seat of state, {520} Was a queen--the gypsy woman late, 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 gypsy said:--