Famous Dances Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dances poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dances poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dances poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Imamu Amiri Baraka
A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and black people
call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will
Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air
We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHEN in the dance of the Nymphs, in the moonlight so holy assembled,
Mingle the Graces, down from Olympus in secret descending,
Here doth the minstrel hide, and list to their numbers enthralling,
Here doth he watch their silent dances' mysterious measure.
All that is glorious in Heaven, and all that the earth in her beauty
Ever hath brought into life, the dreamer awake...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
In flat America, in Chicago,
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
lonely raisin in a cake of concrete.
The Potter Palmers float
in an island parthenon.
Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat
are postmarked with angels and lambs.
But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned
in a triangle of trees...Read more of this...
by
Robert Bly
Inside the veins there are navies setting forth
Tiny explosions at the water lines
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.
It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins the yard was full
Of stiff dogs and hands that clumsily held heavy books.
Now we wake and rise from bed and...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers' song --
The beaches of Lukannon -- two million voices strong!
The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Tommy is three and when he's bad
his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
"Red Roses for a Blue Lady"
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE INDIFFERENT.
COME to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!
Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.
If thou my sweetheart art not, thou canst be so,
But if thou wilt not, we still will dance on.
Come to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!
Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.
THE TENDER.
Loved one, without thee, what...Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
There's a girl from Loyang in the door across the street,
She looks fifteen, she may be a little older.
...While her master rides his rapid horse with jade bit an bridle,
Her handmaid brings her cod-fish in a golden plate.
On her painted pavilions, facing red towers,
Cornices are pink and green with peach-bloom and with willow,
Canopies of...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.
The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene
With Edwardian faience adornment -- Devonshire Street.
No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm
Its chimneys steady against...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How fair doth Nature
Appear again!
How bright the sunbeams!
How smiles the plain!
The flow'rs are bursting
From ev'ry bough,
And thousand voices
Each bush yields now.
And joy and gladness
Fill ev'ry breast!
Oh earth!--oh sunlight!
Oh rapture blest!
Oh love! oh loved one!
As golden bright,
As clouds of morning
On yonder height!
Thou blessest gladly
The smiling field,--
The world in fragrant
Vapour conceal'd.
Oh maiden, maiden,
How love I thee!
Thine eye, how gleams it!
How lov'st...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.
Straightway my olden heart returns
And dances with the dancing burns;
It sings with the sparrows;
To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
Sings my heart aloud...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill's withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
He thinks her little feet should pass
Where dandelions star thickly grass;
Her hands should lift in sunlit air
Sea-wind should tangle up her hair.
Green leaves, he says, have never heard
A sweeter ragtime mockingbird,
Nor has the moon-man ever seen,
Or man in the spotlight, leering green,
Such a beguiling, smiling queen.
Her eyes, he says, are stars...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel
The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift
Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
You are a rose, but set with sharpest spine;
You are a pretty bird that pecks at me;
You are a little squirrel on a tree,
Pelting me with the prickly fruit of the pine;
A diamond, torn from a crystal mine,
Not like that milky treasure of the sea,
A smooth, translucent pearl, but skilfully
Carven to cut,...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
The fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn,
And up from India glances
The silver sail of dawn.
The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what's to pay....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Oh how I love the laughing sea,
Sun lances splintering;
Or with a virile harmony
In salty caves to sing;
Or mumbling pebbles on the shore,
Or roused to monster might:
By day I love the sea, but more
I love it in the night.
High over ocean hangs my home
And when the moon is clear
I stare and stare till fairy foam
...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I cried when the moon was mutmuring to the birds:
'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.'
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Battle cry many new ghosts Worry and grieve alone old man Disorder cloud low dusk Rapid snow dance return wind Gourd ladle discard cup without green Stove remain fire like red Many place news broken Worry sit straight book empty After the battle, many new ghosts cry, The solitary old man worries and grieves. Ragged...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
Drunk on Dragon Hill tonight,
the banished immortal, Great White,
turns among yellow flowers,
his smile wide,
as his hat sails away on the wind
and he dances away in the moonlight....Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark....Read more of this...
by
Sir John Suckling
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been,
Where I the rarest things have seen,
O, things without compare!
Such sights again cannot be found
In any place on English ground,
Be it at wake or fair.
At Charing Cross, hard by the way
Where we, thou know'st, do sell our hay,
There is a house with stairs;
And there...Read more of this...
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