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This dance of death which sounds so musically
Was sure intended for the corpse de ballet.
Author: Anonymous
Source: On the Danse Macabre of Saint-Saens
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O give me new figures! I can't go on dancing
The same that were taught me ten seasons ago;
The schoolmaster over the land is advancing,
Then why is the master of dancing so slow?
It is such a bore to be always caught tripping
In dull uniformity year after year;
Invent something new, and you'll set me a skipping:
I want a new figure to dance with my Dear!
Author: Thomas Haynes Bayly
Source: Quadrille a la Mode
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My dancing days are done.
Author: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
Source: Scornful Lady (act V, sc. 3)
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A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Childe Harold (canto III, st. 21)
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On with the dance! let joy be unconfin'd;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Childe Harold (canto III, st. 22)
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And then he danced;--all foreigners excel
The serious Angles in the eloquence
Of pantomime;--he danced, I say right well,
With emphasis, and also with good sense--
A thing in footing indispensable:
He danced without theatrical pretence,
Not like a ballet-master in the van
Of his drill'd nymphs, but like a gentleman.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Don Juan (canto XIV, st. 38)
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Endearing Waltz--to thy more melting tune
Bow Irish jig, and ancient rigadoon.
Scotch reels, avaunt! and country-dance forego
Your future claims to each fantastic toe!
Waltz--Waltz alone--both legs and arms demands,
Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Waltz (l. 109)
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Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Waltz (l. 234)
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Imperial Waltz! imported from the Rhine
(Famed for the growth of pedigrees and wine),
Long be thine import from all duty free,
And hock itself be less esteem'd than thee.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Waltz (l. 29)
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No Sane man will dance.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Waltz (l. 29)
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music.
Bodies never lie.
Author: Agnes George de Mille
Source: in the "New York Times Magazine", May 11, 1975
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What! the girl I adore by another embraced?
What! the balm of her breath shall another man taste?
What! pressed in the dance by another's man's knee?
What! panting recline on another than me?
Sir, she's yours; you have pressed from the grape its fine blue,
From the rosebud you've shaken the tremulous dew;
What you've touched you may take. Pretty waltzer--adieu!
Author: Sir Henry Charles Englefield
Source: The Waltz--Dancing
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Such pains, such pleasures now alike are o'er,
And beaus and etiquette shall soon exist no more
At their speed behold advancing
Modern men and women dancing;
Step and dress alike express
Above, below from heel to toe,
Male and female awkwardness.
Without a hoop, without a ruffle,
One eternal jig and shuffle,
Where's the air and where's the gait?
Where's the feather in the hat?
Where the frizzed toupee? and where
Oh! where's the powder for the hair?
Author: Catherine M. Fanshawe
Source: The Abrogation of the Birth-Night Ball
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Alike all ages: dames of ancient days
Have led their children through the mirthful maze,
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: The Traveller (l. 251)
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To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
Author: Thomas Gray
Source: Progress of Poesy (pt. I, st. 3, l. 10)
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And the dancing has begun now,
And the dancers whirl round gaily
In the waltz's giddy mazes,
And the ground beneath them trembles.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Book of Songs--Don Ramiro (st. 23)
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Twelve dancers are dancing, and taking no rest,
And closely their hands together are press'd;
And soon as a dance has come to a close,
Another begins, and each merrily goes.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Dream and Life
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Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances
Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows;
Old fold and young together, and children mingled among them.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: Evangeline (pt. I, IV)
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He who esteems the Virginia reel
A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
Than crushing His African children with slavery,
Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon
Are mounted for hell on the devil's own pillion,
Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.
Author: James Russell Lowell
Source: Fable for Critics (l. 492)
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Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.
Author: John Milton
Source: Comus (l. 143)
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Come and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastic toe.
Author: John Milton
Source: L'Allegro (l. 33)
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Dancing in the chequer'd shade.
Author: John Milton
Source: L'Allegro (l. 96)
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Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who
could not hear the music.
Author: John Milton
Source: L'Allegro (l. 96)
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Dear creature!--you'd swear
When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round,
That her steps are of light, that her home is the air,
And she only par complaisance touches the ground.
Author: Thomas Moore
Source: Fudge Family in Paris (letter V, l. 50)
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Others import yet nobler arts from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: The Dunciad (bk. IV, l. 597)
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