Tangle

“ Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable loneliness?
Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as from a broken necklace?
Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this world into sweetness, sweeping aside all waste; the storm centred with your dancing limbs shakes the sacred shower of death over life and freshens her growth. ”

“ And go put on your cleats,
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany.
That's why I'm in such exquisite "ogany".
My soul is on fire,
I's aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire when we tango. ”

“ At last man was to be supreme and the man-beast to find forever his allotted place. Fly as they would the fugitives were too slow to escape from the active savages, and from every side in the tangled woods we heard the exultant yells, the twanging of bows, and the crash and thud as ape-men were brought down from their hiding-places in the trees. ”

“ Why, Fanny Elsler's feet and Taglioni's feet are poetical feet—are they not? or else what is meant by calling dancing the poetry of Motion? And cannot each of those artistes boast of a toe which is the very essence of all poetry—a TO' KAAO'N?
No. You may make verses on Taglioni's feet, (though if she be a poetess, she can do that better than you, standing, too, on one leg, like the man that Horace speaks of;) but you cannot make them of her feet. Feet of which verses are composed are made of syllables, not of bones, muscles, and ligaments. Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of a verse. ”

“ One ought to feel what one was dancing. The features of the head were masked by the flowing hair and beard, just as the wax head’s had been—but there was something about it that made the dance real—real. Suppose it really were the head of someone she loved—Edmund. ”

“ Matt moved his cramped joints and stretched his legs the full width of the tonneau. There were shadowy bluffs on each side of the road, and a tracery of boughs lay against the lighter background of sky. From the fragrant odor, Matt gathered that they were in the depths of a pine forest. He gurgled ineffectively behind the gag.
“He wants to talk, dad,” said the girl. “Why not let him? If any one comes you can prevent him from calling out.”
“You’ve got too much heart, girl, for this kind of work,” returned Dimmock. ”

“ DING DONG [1]
When the world grows old by the chimney-side,
Then forth to the youngling nooks I glide,
Where over the water and over the land
The bells are booming on either hand.
Now up they go ding, then down again dong,
And awhile they ring to the same old song,
For the metal goes round at a single bound,
A-cutting the fields with its measured sound,
While the tired tongue falls with a lengthened boom
As solemn and loud as the crack of doom. ”

“ I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by. ”

“ The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Re-echoed down the burning chords,--
"Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!" ”

“ Shrill screams and hoarse shouts rose above a hissing, scraping sound, the clang of gongs and the click of shoe-heels.
Every voice was pitched to an unnatural key, like that of men in a mill. The noise seemed hot, some way, like smitten iron and brass. ”

“ I laughed at the curling tongs, and blew the little lamp out—my hair did not want curling tongs. I laughed to think of the frights of women going about with their noses in the air, who had to curl their heads. ”

“ When, too, I think of the sound, a mere rattle and jingle at first, but growing in strength and volume with every step, until it came upon us with a thunderous rush and roar which gave the impression of irresistible power, I feel that that too is beyond the power of my feeble words to express. ”

“ In the first imperfect trance-waking from initiatory trance, the patient’s apprehension of sensuous impressions177 often appears to have entirely deserted his own body, and to be in relation with the sentient apparatus in his mesmeriser’s frame—for, if you pull his hair, or put mustard in his mouth, he does not feel either; but he is actually alive to the sensations which these impressions excite, if the hair of the mesmeriser is pulled, or mustard placed on the mesmeriser’s tongue. ”

“ True, our nerves are never strung by them;—it is too constantly the sound of the lyre, and never the note of the trumpet; but they are not gross, as has been presumed, but always elevated above the sensual. ”

“ But here Nature fulfilled her want of speech and spoke for her. The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the birds and rustle of trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul. This murmur and movement of Nature were the dumb girl's language; that speech of the dark eyes, which the long lashes shaded, was the language of the world about her. ”

“ Even if the Tango does not particularly attract you, if it is the rage among your set try to learn it because otherwise you will soon begin to feel yourself left out and neglected, no matter how pretty and accomplished you are in other ways, for I know you well enough now to know that you are not strong enough, dear child, to turn a tide or make any considerable quantity of your friends follow your lead. ”

“ Thy blue eyes roll'd on me,
Too soft for the dead;
Thy cheek bore no trace
Where the earth-worm had fed.
The red of thy lip
With smiles was still wreath'd,
The tone of thy voice
In music still breath’d. ”

“ Let your smiling lips say on oath how my voice lost itself in silence like a drunken bee in the lotus.
It is evening, and the time for the flowers to close their petals.
Give me leave to sit by your side, and bid my lips to do the work that can be done in silence and in the dim light of stars. ”

“ Or, that last scene, when the trumpet sounds and earth is shivering to its foundations, the fire is bubbling forth through the rents in its surface, and the dead are coming together flesh to flesh, and bone to bone, and muscle to muscle—then the weary man sits down and casts off his shoes! ”

“ It is like the dancing of the Dervishes—faster and faster, furious and more furious, higher and higher, so quick at last that the eye cannot follow the movements,—and then comes the breaking out of the wild demoniac cries, and the convulsive excitement, which is finally satisfied with nothing but the letting of blood. ”

“ And, climbing up the mountain gorge,
Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.
Then, through the silence overhead,
An angel with a trumpet said,
"Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!" ”

“ The cheek burns, the eye kindles, the step is lighter, and the voice softer, in that sweet time, when the conscious feelings have never ventured into words; it is like the feeling with which we listen to distant, yet exquisite, music ”

“ When the shorter line falls within the stanza, there is greater play of mood and thought, with the elasticity of the outward swing and return in the rhythm of the thought as we feel it through the succession of stanzas in The Song of the Rain Chant. The line of verse sweeps outward and the thought recedes at the ebb, as clearly as a Hiroshige wave crest lifts and the waters return to their level. ”

“ A wild gust of wind, laden with all the fragrance of hills and woods, would put out my light, and I would fling aside my dress and lie down on my bed, my eyes closed and my body thrilling with delight, and there around me in the breeze, amid all the perfume of the woods and hills, floated through the silent gloom many a caress and many a kiss and many a tender touch of hands, and gentle murmurs in my ears, and fragrant breaths on my brow ”

“ What they look for under the most grandiose conceptions and stage effects, and under the most audacious novelties in rhyme; what they adore on bended knee when they have found it, is a short passage, a line, half a line, on which an imperceptible hint of profound passion, or the most fleeting phase, though unexpressed, of love in joy, in suffering or in death has left its impress. ”

“ Sometimes she leaves her watch-tower, and is found midst an umbrageous loveliness, listening to Echo, or sweet Philomel; in the mazy dance, gentle are her lovely motions,—smoothly gliding, undulating or winding, her buoyant form exciting the most pleasing of sensitive perceptions. ”

“ When from the original fount in the depths of the Universe streams of melody are sent forth abroad, their echo is reflected into our heart from the faces of our beloved and the other beauteous things around us. It must be, as I suggested, this Echo which we love, and not the things themselves from which it happens to be reflected; for that which one day we scarce deign to glance at, may be, on another, the very thing which claims our whole devotion. ”

“ My tongue is stiff, like my legs. It can wag through the old motions, but it has lost its spontaneity. One glance from the eye of the boy down the long table and she is oblivious of my existence. Should I try to dance with her I should quickly find that crabbed middle-age and youth cannot step in time. ”

“ A low rippling figure, or rather part-figure and part-melodic theme, is heard: it mounts higher, descends again, sways about, swells and dies away; other melodies are interwoven with it; it becomes more rapid in its motion, and grows louder until we feel the wind getting up and the leaves dancing, and then comes the voice of the bird. ”

“ My poems began to be of a meditative, doleful, over-subtle nature, and he, round whose figure revolved all my dreams, my thoughts, my verses, criticized and corrected the lines, that held all the unspeakable woe and longing of my soul, criticized and corrected them with an odd smile on his face sometimes, and with looks grave, sad, far away, at other times. ”

“ Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.
Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy feet stands in awe with all its silent stars. ”

“ Beyond doubt, the Tango correctly practised is the essence of the modern soul of dancing, the autocrat of the up-to-date "soiree dansant." For it is not only a dance, it is a style; to master the Tango one must first master its style, absorb its atmosphere. ”

“ As our breath produces a louder sound when it passes through the long and narrow opening of the trumpet and escapes by a hole which widens at the end, even so the fettering rules of poetry clarify our meaning. ”

“ In wilful slumber, deepening every hour,
That draw their curtains closer round,
The nearer swells the trumpet's sound?
Lord; ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,
Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh. ”

“ The eye and the ear, the tongue and the nose, all have their habits. Go into a strange land, and you will split your sides at the odd dresses of the people. Stay there a year, and you will think your own countrymen as comical. The blast of the trumpet cracks a lady's ears ”

“ As we sit in this wonderful air, many sounds—that of wood-chopping for one—come to our ears, agreeably blunted, or muffled even, like the drumming of a partridge, not sharp and rending as in winter and recently. ”

“ Chandra
It means this song.
(They sing.)
We move and move without rest,
[75] We move while the wanderers' stars shine in the sky and fade.
We play the tune of the road
While our limbs scatter away the laughter of movement,
And our many-coloured mantle of youth flutters about in the air. ”

“ Transmitted through the atmosphere below, they eventually awaken an echo in the heart of some aspiring soul,—when, lo, a new poem, a new strain of melody, a new harmonious thought, is given to the world. ”

“ The first four figures of the Tango really are the Tango; that is, the Tango, as danced in the parlor and the ball-room. They consist of Four Steps Forward and Back, Circling, the
Illustration 1
Grape Vine and the Draw. Mastering these figures means learning the Tango; for the many other figures are added merely for the sake of variety and come naturally after these first four have been learned so thoroughly as to be danced without thought or effort. The Tango cannot be danced to march or two-step music. ”

“ If I stand up straight and strong with the strength of a daring heart spurning the wiles and arts of twining weakness, if I hold my head high like a tall young mountain fir, no longer trailing in the dust like a liana, shall I then appeal to man’s eye? ”

“ From thy lips the last inspired sound hath burst forth—thine eyes do not gleam and flash, they are dusky, weighted with happiness, with the blissful consciousness of that beauty to which thou hast succeeded in giving expression,—of that beauty in quest of which thou stretchest forth, as it were, thy triumphant, thine exhausted hands! ”

“ Brooding, pathetic, by a river, lone.
Oh, sharper tangs pierced through this perfumed May.
Strange aches sailed by with odors on the wind
As when we kneel in flowers that grow on graves
Of friends who died unworthy of our love. ”

“ To me they turn in vain.
I heard thee wake the deep harp chords
For other ears than mine,
I saw the light of thy soft eyes
Upon another shine.
The heart must speak or ever words
My depth of love can tell ”

“ The turbulence is manifested by a composite sound, somewhat muffled, the trampling of feet, bellowings and angry shoutings, and a rattle of drums; and the repeated blare of fierce trumpets. Then [2] a girl’s voice is heard screaming in an anguish of fear and protest ”