The Dance of Love
All night we danced upon our windy hill,Your dress a cloud of tangled midnight hair,And love was much too much for me to wearMy leaves; the killer roared above his kill,But you danced on, and when some star would spillIts red and white upon you whirling there,I sensed a hidden beauty in the air;Though you danced on, my heart and I stood still.
But suddenly a bit of morning creptAlong your trembling sides of ebony;I saw the tears your tired limbs had wept,And how your breasts heaved high, how languidlyYour dark arms moved; I drew you close to me;We flung ourselves upon our hill and slept.
Words in this poem
- spill n.
- A bit of wood split off; a splinter. [sq. root170. Cf. Spell a splinter.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Dance of Love is in the public domain. This text is taken from Color, Project Gutenberg ebook #70543; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Countee Cullen, The Dance of Love, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/the-dance-of-love.html, id L01429.
Form and metre
The Dance of Love is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 29% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBAABBA hillA · hairB · wearB · killA · spillA · thereB · airB · stillA
- 2 A-A--A creptA · ebony · weptA · languidly · me · sleptA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| All night we danced upon our windy hill, | 10 | ······//˘· |
| Your dress a cloud of tangled midnight hair, | 10 | ·····/˘/·· |
| And love was much too much for me to wear | 10 | ·········· |
| My leaves; the killer roared above his kill, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| But you danced on, and when some star would spill | 10 | ·········· |
| Its red and white upon you whirling there, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I sensed a hidden beauty in the air; | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Though you danced on, my heart and I stood still. | 10 | ·········· |
| But suddenly a bit of morning crept | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| Along your trembling sides of ebony; | 9 | ˘/·/˘··/˘ |
| I saw the tears your tired limbs had wept, | 9 | ·····/··· |
| And how your breasts heaved high, how languidly | 10 | ·········· |
| Your dark arms moved; I drew you close to me; | 10 | ·········· |
| We flung ourselves upon our hill and slept. | 10 | ··˘/··/··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.