Midnight shout and revelry,

Tipsy dance and jollity.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 103.

Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth!

Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stainèd mouth.

John Keats (1795-1821): Ode to a Nightingale.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!

Come to the mother's, when she feels

For the first time her first-born's breath!

Come when the blessed seals

That close the pestilence are broke,

And crowded cities wail its stroke!

Come in consumption's ghastly form,

The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!

Come when the heart beats high and warm,

With banquet song, and dance, and wine!

And thou art terrible!—the tear,

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

And all we know or dream or fear

Of agony are thine.

Alfred Bunn (1790-1860): Marco Bozzaris.

To dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act v. Sc. 2.

Jack shall pipe and Gill shall dance.

George Wither (1588-1667): Poem on Christmas.

Round and round, like a dance of snow

In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go

Floating the women faded for ages,

Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): Women and Roses.

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Did ye not hear it?—No! 't was but the wind,

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 22.

The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Three years she grew in Sun and Shower.

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,

Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?

Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?

You have the letters Cadmus gave,—

Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto iii. Stanza 86. 10.

When you do dance, I wish you

A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Winter's Tale. Act iv. Sc. 4.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

'T is not enough no harshness gives offence,—

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 162.