Lyrics Motive - In The Nursery

Motive

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