Cicero.    

Elijah Fenton.    

George Herbert.    

	Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
	In a light fantastic round.

Milton.    

	To brisk notes in cadence beating
	Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Gray.    

	While his off-heel, insidiously aside,
	Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.

Sheridan.    

	Come and trip it as ye go,
	On the light fantastic toe.

Milton.    

	Others import yet nobler arts from France,
	Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.

Pope.    

Terence.    

Théodore Barriere.    

Talmage.    

	The dancing pair, that simply sought renown,
	By holding out, to tire each other down.

Goldsmith.    

	But O, she dances such a way!
	No sun upon an Easter-day,
	Is half so fine a sight.

Sir John Suckling.    

	And the dancing has begun now,
	And the dancers whirl round gaily
	In the waltz’s giddy mazes,
	And the ground beneath them trembles.

Heine.    

Horace Bushnell.    

Geo. F. Hall.    

Gotthold.    

	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.

Byron.    

Richter.    

	The rout is Folly’s circle, which she draws
	With magic wand. So potent is the spell,
	That none decoy’d into that fatal ring,
	Unless by heaven’s peculiar grace, escape.
	There we grow early gray, but never wise.

Cowper.    

Hall.    

	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 frisked beneath the burden of threescore.

Goldsmith.    

	Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances
	Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows;
	Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them.

Longfellow.    

Gotthold.    

Channing.    

	I saw her at a country ball:
	There when the sound of flute and fiddle
	Gave signal sweet in that old hall,
	Of hands across and down the middle.
	Hers was the subtlest spell by far
	Of all that sets young hearts romancing;
	She was our queen, our rose, our star;
	And when she danced—oh, heaven, her dancing!

Praed.    

	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.

Byron.    

	And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
	With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance;
	And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free
	As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree.

Whittier.    

	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.

Lowell.    

Sam Jones.    

Longfellow.    

	I love to go and mingle with the young
	In the gay festal room—when every heart
	Is beating faster than the merry tune,
	And their blue eyes are restless, and their lips
	Parted with eager joy, and their round cheeks
	Flush’d with the beautiful motion of the dance.

Willis.    

	And then he danced—all foreigners excel
	The serious Angles in the eloquence
	Of pantomine—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.

Byron.    

Talmage.    

Talmage.    

	Chaste were his steps, each kept within due bound,
	And elegance was sprinkled o’er his figure;
	Like swift Camilla, he scarce skimm’d the ground,
	And rather held in than put forth his vigor:
	And then he had an ear for music’s sound,
	Which might defy a crotchet critic’s rigor.
	Such classic pas—sans flaws—set off our hero,
	He glanced like a personified Bolero.

Byron.    

	Once on a time, the wight Stupidity
	For his throne trembled,
	When he discovered in the brains of men
	Something like thoughts assembled,
	And so he searched for a plausible plan—
	One of validity—
	And racked his brains, if rack his brains he can,
	None having, or a very few!
	At last he hit upon a way
	For putting to rout,
	And driving out
	From our dull clay
	These same intruders new—
	This Sense, these Thoughts, these Speculative ills—
	What could he do? He introduced quadrilles.

Ruskin.    

	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?

Catherine Fanshawe.