The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 / Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales

Milton, the greatest of the Puritans—intellectual ancestry of the modern degenerate Prudes—had a wholesome love of the dance, and nowhere is his pen so joyous as in its description in the well known passage from 'Comus' which, should it occur to my memory while delivering a funeral oration, I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit this, our present argument, is but little furthered by its context

Meanwhile welcome joy and feast
Midnight shout and revelry
Tipsy dance and jollity
Braid your locks with rosy twine
Dropping odors dropping wine
Rigor now is gone to bed
And advice with scrupulous head
Strict age and sour severity
With their grave saws in slumber lie
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire
Who in their nightly watching spheres
Lead in swift round the months and years
The sounds and seas with all their finny drove
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves

If Milton was not himself a good dancer—and as to that point my memory is unstored with instance or authority—it will at least be conceded that he was an admirable reporter, with his heart in the business. Somewhat to lessen the force of the objection that he puts the foregoing lines into a not very respectable mouth, on a not altogether reputable occasion, I append the following passage from the same poem, supposed to be spoken by the good spirit who had brought a lady and her two brothers through many perils, restoring them to their parents:

Noble lord and lady bright
I have brought ye new delight
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own
Heaven hath timely tried their youth
Their faith their patience and their truth
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise
To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual folly and intemperance

The lines on dancing—lines which themselves dance—in 'L'Allegro,' are too familiar, I dare not permit myself the enjoyment of quotation.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most finished gentlemen of his time, otherwise laments in his autobiography that he had never learned to dance because that accomplishment 'doth fashion the body, and gives one a good presence and address in all companies since it disposeth the limbs to a kind of souplesse (as the French call it) and agility insomuch as they seem to have the use of their legs, arms, and bodies more than many others who, standing stiff and stark in their postures, seem as if they were taken in their joints, or had not the perfect use of their members.' Altogether, a very grave objection to dancing in the opinion of those who discountenance it, and I take great credit for candor in presenting his lordship's indictment.

In the following pertinent passage from Lemontey I do not remember the opinion he quotes from Locke, but his own is sufficiently to the point:

The dance is for young women what the chase is for young men: a protecting school of wisdom—a preservative of the growing passions. The celebrated Locke who made virtue the sole end of education, expressly recommends teaching children to dance as early as they are able to learn. Dancing carries within itself an eminently cooling quality and all over the world the tempests of the heart await to break forth the repose of the limbs.

In 'The Traveller,' Goldsmith says:

Alike all ages dames of ancient days
Have led their children through the mirthful maze
And the gay grandsire skilled in gestic lore
Has frisked beneath the burden of three score.

To the Prudes, in all soberness—Is it likely, considering the stubborn conservatism of age, that these dames, well seasoned in the habit, will leave it off directly, or the impenitent old grandsire abate one jot or tittle of his friskiness in the near future? Is it a reasonable hope? Is the outlook from the watch towers of Philistia an encouraging one?

X THEY ALL DANCE

Fountains dance down to the river,
Rivers to the ocean
Summer leaflets dance and quiver
To the breeze's motion
Nothing in the world is single—
All things by a simple rule
Nods and steps and graces mingle
As at dancing school
See the shadows on the mountain
Pirouette with one another
See the leaf upon the fountain
Dances with its leaflet brother
See the moonlight on the earth
Flecking forest gleam and glance!
What are all these dancings worth
If I may not dance?

—After Shelley