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Best Famous Ballroom Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Ballroom poems. This is a select list of the best famous Ballroom poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Ballroom poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of ballroom poems.

Search and read the best famous Ballroom poems, articles about Ballroom poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Ballroom poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

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Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Infamous Poet

 I never did fit in – at six or sixty one –

I stand out in a crowd, too young or old

And gather pity like a shroud. "Is that real silk?"

A teenager inquired. "As real as Oxfam ever is

For one pound fifty." The vast ballroom was growing misty

And blurred with alcohol I’ve never had the taste for.

"**** off" a forty-plus dyed blonde said half in jest.

So I chose the only Asian girl in Squares with hair like jet

And danced with her five minutes centre stage –

I’ve lost all inhibitions in old age. A Malaysian architecture

Student invited me to sit and get my breath back

"Le Corbusier described a house as a machine for living in,"

I quipped; she slipped a smile and sipped her drink and said

"I love Leeds and its people; in seven years I’ve never 

Heard a single racist comment, whatever the papers say"

Malaysian girls are rightly known for their sensual beauty

But I made my pitiful excuses and slipped away.

I knew I couldn’t make it, couldn’t even fake it

With all this damned depression in the way.

Leeds boys are always friendlier than the girls,

They see themselves grown older in my years

And push the girls towards me with a glance

"Go and give the poor old man a dance!"

And dance I do and show my poems around

Like calling cards and jot lines on my palms.

Reading Lacan into the night I thought things through

But somehow none of them was half as good as you.


Written by Delmore Schwartz | Create an image from this poem

Poem (You my photographer you most aware)

 You, my photographer, you, most aware,
Who climbed to the bridge when the iceberg struck,
Climbed with your camera when the ship's hull broke,
And lighted your flashes and, standing passionate there,
Wound the camera in the sudden burst's flare,
Shot the screaming women, and turned and took
Pictures of the iceberg (as the ship's deck shook)
Dreaming like the moon in the night's black air!

You, tiptoe on the rail to film a child!
The nude old woman swimming in the sea
Looked up from the dark water to watch you there;
Below, near the ballroom where the band still toiled,
The frightened, in their lifebelts, watched you bitterly -
You hypocrite! My brother! We are a pair!
Written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox | Create an image from this poem

At The Hop

 ‘Tis time to dress. Dost hear the music surging
Like sobbing waves that roll up from the sea?
Yes, yes, I hear – I yield – no need of urging;
I know your wishes, - send Lisette to me.

I hate the ballroom; hate its gilded pleasure;
I hate the crowd within it, well you know;
But what of that? I am your lawful treasure –
And when you would display me I must go.

You bought me with a mother’s pain and trouble.
I’ve been a great expense to you always.
And now, if you can sell me, and get double
The sum cost – why, what have I to say?

You’ve done your duty: kept me in the fashion,
And shown off me at every stylish place.
‘Twas not your fault I had a heart of passion;
‘Twas not your fault I ever saw his face.

The dream was brief, and beautiful, and tender,
(O, God! to live those golden hours once more.
The silver moonlight, and his dark eyes’ splendour,
The sky above us, and the sea below.)

Come, come, Lisette, bring out those royal laces;
To-night must make the victory complete.
Among the crowd of masked and smiling faces,
I’ll move with laughter, and with smiles most sweet.

Make me most fair! with youth and grace and beauty.
I needs must conquer bloated age and gold.
She shall not say I have not done my duty;
I’m ready now – a daughter to be sold!
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

The Made to Order Smile

 When a woman looks up at you with a twist about her eyes, 
And her brows are half uplifted in a nicely feigned surprise 
As you breathe some pretty sentence, though she hates you all the while, 
She is very apt to stun you with a made to order smile. 

It's a sublte combination of a sneer and a caress, 
With a dash of warmth thrown in to relieve its iciness, 
And she greets you when she meets you with that look as if a file 
Had been used to fix and fashion out the made to order smile. 

I confess that I'm eccentric and am not a woman's man, 
For they seem to be constructed on the bunko fakir plan, 
And it somehow sets me thinking that her heart is full of guile 
When a woman looks up at me with a made to order smile. 

Now, all maidens, young and aged, hear the lesson I would teach: 
Ye who meet us in the ballroom, ye who meet us at the beach, 
Pray consent to try and charm us by some other sort of wile 
And relieve us from the burden of that made to order smile.
Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

Australian Scenery

 The Mountains 
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go 
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow 
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below. 
A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake 
As those who sit by a dead campfire, and wait for the dawn to break, 
Or those who watched by the Holy Cross for the dead Redeemer's sake. 

A land where silence lies so deep that sound itself is dead 
And a gaunt grey bird, like a homeless soul, drifts, noiseless, overhead 
And the world's great story is left untold, and the message is left unsaid. 


The Plains 
A land as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow 
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go 
Like shifting symbols of hope deferred -- land where you never know. 
Land of plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance, 
Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance, 
Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance. 

And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by, 
Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry 
-- Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.


Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok

 But why did I kill him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,
As my fingers sink into the fair
White skin of his throat. It was I!
I killed him! My God! Don't you hear?
I shook him until his red tongue
Hung flapping out through the black, *****,
Swollen lines of his lips. And I clung
With my nails drawing blood, while I flung
The loose, heavy body in fear.
Fear lest he should still not be dead.
I was drunk with the lust of his life.
The blood-drops oozed slow from his head
And dabbled a chair. And our strife
Lasted one reeling second, his knife
Lay and winked in the lights overhead.
And the waltz from the ballroom I heard,
When I called him a low, sneaking cur.
And the wail of the violins stirred
My brute anger with visions of her.
As I throttled his windpipe, the purr
Of his breath with the waltz became blurred.
I have ridden ten miles through the dark,
With that music, an infernal din,
Pounding rhythmic inside me. Just Hark!
One! Two! Three! And my fingers 
sink in
To his flesh when the violins, thin
And straining with passion, grow stark.
One! Two! Three! Oh, the horror 
of sound!
While she danced I was crushing his throat.
He had tasted the joy of her, wound
Round her body, and I heard him gloat
On the favour. That instant I smote.
One! Two! Three! How the dancers 
swirl round!
He is here in the room, in my arm,
His limp body hangs on the spin
Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm
Of blood-drops is hemming us in!
Round and round! One! Two! Three! And 
his sin
Is red like his tongue lolling warm.
One! Two! Three! And the drums 
are his knell.
He is heavy, his feet beat the floor
As I drag him about in the swell
Of the waltz. With a menacing roar,
The trumpets crash in through the door.
One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell.
One! Two! Three! In the chaos 
of space
Rolls the earth to the hideous glee
Of death! And so cramped is this place,
I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three!
Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles 
me!
He has covered my mouth with his face!
And his blood has dripped into my heart!
And my heart beats and labours. One! Two!
Three! His dead limbs have coiled every part
Of my body in tentacles. Through
My ears the waltz jangles. Like glue
His dead body holds me athwart.
One! Two! Three! Give me air! Oh! My 
God!
One! Two! Three! I am drowning 
in slime!
One! Two! Three! And his corpse, 
like a clod,
Beats me into a jelly! The chime,
One! Two! Three! And his 
dead legs keep time.
Air! Give me air! Air! My God!
Written by Donald Justice | Create an image from this poem

The Assassination

 It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.
It courses through the cables laid for it.
It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.
We are too close. Too late, we would move back.
We are involved with the surge.

Now it bursts. Now it has been announced.
Now it is being soaked up by newspapers.
Now it is running through the streets.
The crowd has it. The woman selling carnations
And the man in the straw hat stand with it in their shoes.

Here is the red marquee it sheltered under.
Here is the ballroom, here
The sadly various orchestra led
By a single gesture. My arms open.
It enters. Look, we are dancing.
Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

The Plains

 A land, as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow 
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go 
Like shifting symbols of hope deferred - land where you never know. 

Land of the plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance, 
Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance, 
Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance. 

And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by, 
Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry 
- Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry