Famous Waltz Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Waltz poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous waltz poems. These examples illustrate what a famous waltz poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
My soul, lost in the music's mist,
Roamed, rapt, 'neath skies of amethyst.
The cheerless streets grew summer meads,
The Son of Ph[oe]bus spurred his steeds,
And, wand'ring down the mazy tune,
December lost its way in June,
While from a verdant vale I heard
The piping of a love-lorn bird.
A something in the tender strain
Revived an old, long-conquered pain,
And as in depths of many seas,
My heart...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb---
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The band was playing a waltz-quadrille,
I felt as light as a wind-blown feather,
As we floated away, at the caller’s will,
Through the intricate, mazy dance together.
Like mimic armies our lines were meeting,
Slowly advancing, and then retreating,
All decked in their bright array;
And back and forth to the music’s rhyme
We moved together, and all the time
I knew you were going away.
The fold...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
IT’S going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.
Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.
There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents...Read more of this...
by
Shel Silverstein
Danny O'Dare, the dancin' bear,
Ran away from the County Fair,
Ran right up to my back stair
And thought he'd do some dancin' there.
He started jumpin' and skippin' and kickin',
He did a dance called the Funky Chicken,
He did the Polka, he did the Twist,
He bent himself into a pretzel like this.
He did the Dog and the Jitterbug,
He did the Jerk and...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
A Waltz Song.
O sway, and swing, and sway,
And swing, and sway, and swing!
Ah me, what bliss like unto this,
Can days and daylight bring?
A rose beneath your feet
Has fallen from my head;
Its odour rises sweet,
All crushed it lies, and dead.
O Love is like a rose,
Fair-hued, of fragrant breath;
A tender flow'r that lives an hour,
And is most sweet in death.
O swing,...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?
The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided...Read more of this...
by
Gregory Corso
Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
I
A dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Before this scarf was faded,
What hours of mirth it knew;
How gayly it paraded
From smiling eyes to view.
The days were tinged with glory,
The nights too quickly sped,
And life was like a story
Where all the people wed.
Before this rosebud wilted,
How passionately sweet
The wild waltz smelled and lilted
In time for flying feet;
How loud the bassoons muttered,
The horns grew madly shrill,
And oh! the...Read more of this...
by
Leonard Cohen
(After Lorca)
Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
My student-lamp is lighted,
The books and papers are spread;
A sound comes floating upwards,
Chasing the thoughts from my head.
I open the garret window,
Let the music in and the moon;
See the woman grin for coppers,
While the man grinds out the tune.
Grind me a dirge or a requiem,
Or a funeral-march sad and slow,
But not, O not, that waltz tune
I heard so long...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile.
And each ranked ruin tended to beguile
The outer sense, and shape itself as though
It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow
Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.
When lo, swift hands,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
Sing, for Faith and Hope are high --
None so true as you and I --
Sing the Lovers' Litany:
"Love like ours can never die!"
Eyes of black -- a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile.
And each ranked ruin tended to beguile
The outer sense, and shape itself as though
It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow
Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.
When lo, swift hands,...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
A Vienna ci sono dieci ragazze,
una spalla dove piange la morte
e un bosco di colombe disseccate.
C'e' un frammento del mattino
nel museo della brina.
C'è un salone con mille vetrate.
Ahi! Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!
Prendi questo valzer con la bocca chiusa.
Questo valzer, questo valzer, questo valzer,
di sì, di morte e di cognac
che si bagna la coda nel mare.
Io ti amo, io...Read more of this...
by
Federico García Lorca
In Vienna there are ten little girls,
a shoulder for death to cry on,
and a forest of dried pigeons.
There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.
There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.
Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.
I love you, I...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Are the sports of our youth so displeasing?
Is love but the folly you say?
Benumbed with the winter, and freezing,
You scold at the revels of May.
For you once a nymph had her charms,
And Oh! when the waltz you were wreathing,
All Olympus embraced in your arms--
All its nectar in Julia's breathing.
If Jove at that moment had hurled
The earth in some other...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm;...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
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,...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena
She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."
I felt that I had met someone from home.
No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common
Like...Read more of this...
by
Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped...Read more of this...
by
Marina Tsvetaeva
In the old Strauss waltz for the first time
We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.
We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets,
And are drunk on nearness of the end.
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy
Is put in the hearts...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Waltz poems.