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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 Li Po
 I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.

But the moon doesn't drink,
and my shadow silently follows.

I will travel with moon and shadow,
happy to the end of spring.

When I sing, the moon dances.
When I dance, my shadow dances, too.

We share life's joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.

Constant friends, although we wander,
we'll meet again in the Milky Way.

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

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 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 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 Mother Goose
There came an old woman from FranceWho 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 Edward Dorn
 But now I pass
graveyards in a car.
The dead lie,
unsuperstitiously,
with their feet toward me--
please forgive me for
saying the tombstones would not
fancy their faces turned from the highway.

Oh perish the thought
I was thinking in that moment
Newman Illinois
the Saturday night dance--
what a life? Would I like it again?
No. Once I returned late summer
from California thin from journeying
and the girls were not the same.
You'll say that's natural
they had been dancing all the time.

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 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.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry