omission of normal verbs

"Through the thick wood, that gave him way, and past the thorns that drew

Their sharpest points another way, the King's son presses through.

He reached the guard, the court, the hall,—and there, where'er he stept,

He saw the sentinels, and grooms, and courtiers as they slept.

Ladies in act to smile, and pages in attendance wait;"

This is from Walter Crane's Sleeping Beauty (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23521/23521-h/23521-h.htm). I wonder what verbs would have been in the bolded last sentence.

Solution 1:

This line does have a rather twisted syntax, in order to make it rhyme. However, there are no verbs missing. Dropping the intervening prepositional phrases, you get

ladies and pages wait.

Paraphrased, this line means

ladies (caught in the act of starting to smile) wait to smile, and pages wait to attend (on their masters).

Since pages wait on their masters, and these ladies might be ladies-in-waiting, there is a subtle play on words here.