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Famous Short Dance Poems

Famous Short Dance Poems. Short Dance Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Dance short poems


by Langston Hughes
 To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening.
.
.
A tall, slim tree.
.
.
Night coming tenderly Black like me.



by Langston Hughes
 I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat, Make a drumbeat, Put it on a record, let it whirl, And while we listen to it play, Dance with you till day-- Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

by R S Thomas
 We met
 under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed, love's moment in a world in servitude to time.
She was young; I kissed with my eyes closed and opened them on her wrinkles.
`Come,' said death, choosing her as his partner for the last dance, And she, who in life had done everything with a bird's grace, opened her bill now for the shedding of one sigh no heavier than a feather.

by William Henry Davies
  Now shall I walk 
Or shall I ride? 
"Ride", Pleasure said; 
"Walk", Joy replied.
Now what shall I -- Stay home or roam? "Roam", Pleasure said; And Joy -- "stay home.
" Now shall I dance, Or sit for dreams? "Sit," answers Joy; "Dance," Pleasure screams.
Which of ye two Will kindest be? Pleasure laughed sweet, But Joy kissed me.

by Charles Bukowski
 shot in the eye 
shot in the brain 
shot in the ass 
shot like a flower in the dance 

amazing how death wins hands down 
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life 

amazing how laughter has been drowned out 
amazing how viciousness is such a constant 

I must soon declare my own war on their war 
I must hold to my last piece of ground 
I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life 

my life not their death 
my death not their death.
.
.



by Dame Edith Sitwell
 CAME the great Popinjay 
Smelling his nosegay: 
In cages like grots 
The birds sang gavottes.
'Herodiade's flea Was named sweet Amanda, She danced like a lady From here to Uganda.
Oh, what a dance was there! Long-haired, the candle Salome-like tossed her hair To a dance tune by Handel.
' .
.
.
Dance they still? Then came Courtier Death, Blew out the candle flame With civet breath.

by Sarojini Naidu
 FROM groves of spice, 
O'er fields of rice, 
Athwart the lotus-stream, 
I bring for you, 
Aglint with dew 
A little lovely dream.
Sweet, shut your eyes, The wild fire-fiies Dance through the fairy neem; From the poppy-bole For you I stole A little lovely dream.
Dear eyes, good-night, In golden light The stars around you gleam; On you I press With soft caress A little lovely dream.

by Sara Teasdale
 To-night I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me --
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.
The years went by and never knew That each one brought me nearer you; Their path was narrow and apart And yet it led me to your heart -- Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years, That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.

by Robert Herrick
 While the milder fates consent,
Let's enjoy our merriment :
Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play ;
Kiss our dollies night and day :
Crowned with clusters of the vine,
Let us sit, and quaff our wine.
Call on Bacchus, chant his praise ; Shake the thyrse, and bite the bays : Rouse Anacreon from the dead, And return him drunk to bed : Sing o'er Horace, for ere long Death will come and mar the song : Then shall Wilson and Gotiere Never sing or play more here.

by Barry Tebb
 I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’

As of the eye

The bream or white-bait showed

In its hysterical dance of death

When the receding tide

Left it asleep

In a shallow pool on the shore.
Why did I fail to take it? Was I strangely compassionate Or merely afraid to touch The jerking spasm of flesh With the still eye? Or was it I on the shore In the shallow pool, left by the tide, Engaged in that mystic dance of death, Twenty years before?

by James A Emanuel
 Stairstep music: ups,
downs, Bill Robinson smiling,
jazzdancing the rounds.
She raised champagne lips, danced inside banana hips.
All Paris wooed Jo.
Banana panties, perfumed belt, Jazz tatooing lush ecstasies felt.
Josephine, royal, jewelling her dance, flushing the bosom of France.

by Countee Cullen
 With two white roses on her breasts, 
White candles at head and feet, 
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests; 
Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring To lay her out in white; She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing to see herself tonight.

by Siegfried Sassoon
 In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense And strangle Reason in his seat.
My loves leap through the future’s fence To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
In me the cave-man clasps the seer, And garlanded Apollo goes Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble, Since there your elements assemble.

by James Joyce
 Lean out of the window, 
Goldenhair, 
I hear you singing 
A merry air.
My book was closed, I read no more, Watching the fire dance On the floor.
I have left my book, I have left my room, For I heard you singing Through the gloom.
Singing and singing A merry air, Lean out of the window, Goldenhair.

by Tristan Tzara
 the fibres give in to your starry warmth
a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the rivers' magic
and i've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake
has snapped the sabre
but the dance round terrace tables
shuts in the shock of the marble shudder
new sober

by Adrian Green
 in the soft jazz and midnight hour
your eyes are dancing close to mine
a sway of hips, a touch of lips

while on the stand
piano player’s fingers
dance around the tune
above a gentle touch
caressing music from the bass

your fingers up and down my spine

in the soft jazz and midnight hour
we lose ourselves in bluenote time

by James A Emanuel
 There ain't NO-BO-DY
can dance like THAT, 'cept them twins
Jazzlene and Jazzphat.

by Mother Goose

There came an old woman from France
Who taught grown-up children to dance;
    But they were so stiff,
    She sent them home in a sniff,
This sprightly old woman from France.


by Stanley Kunitz
 My name is Solomon Levi,
the desert is my home,
my mother's breast was thorny,
and father I had none.
The sands whispered, Be separate, the stones taught me, Be hard.
I dance, for the joy of surviving, on the edge of the road.

by Oscar Wilde
 Go, little book,
To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look
Into thy pages: it may hap that he
May find that golden maidens dance through thee.

by Du Fu
Huangsi girl house flowers fill path
Thousand blossom ten thousand blossom press branch low
Reluctant to leave play butterfly constantly dance
Free and unrestrained lovely oriole cry


At Huang Si's house, flowers fill the path,
Myriad blossoms press the branches low.
Constantly dancing butterflies stay to play,
Unrestrained, the lovely orioles cry.

by Louisa May Alcott
 O lesson well and wisely taught 
Stay with me to the last, 
That all my life may better be 
For the trial that is past.
O vanity, mislead no more! Sleep, like passions, long! Wake, happy heart, and dance again To the music of my song! O summer days, flit fast away, And bring the blithesome hour When we three wanderers shall meet Safe in our household flower! O dear mamma, lament no more! Smile on us as we come, Your grief has been our punishment, Your love has led us home.

by Ann Taylor
 Dance little baby, dance up high,
Never mind baby, mother is by;
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There little baby, there you go;
Up to the ceiling, down to the ground,
Backwards and forwards, round and round;
Dance little baby, and mother shall sing,
With the merry coral, ding, ding, ding.

by Harold Pinter
 Don't look.
The world's about to break.
Don't look.
The world's about to chuck out all its light and stuff us in the chokepit of its dark, That black and fat suffocated place Where we will kill or die or dance or weep Or scream of whine or squeak like mice To renegotiate our starting price.

by R S Thomas
 She is young.
Have I the right Even to name her? Child, It is not love I offer Your quick limbs, your eyes; Only the barren homage Of an old man whom time Crucifies.
Take my hand A moment in the dance, Ignoring its sly pressure, The dry rut of age, And lead me under the boughs Of innocence.
Let me smell My youth again in your hair.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things