Danse Africaine
The low beating of the tom-toms,The slow beating of the tom-toms.Low ... slowSlow ... low—Stirs your blood.Dance!A night-veiled girlWhirls softly into aCircle of light.Whirls softly ... slowly,Like a wisp of smoke around the fire—And the tom-toms beat,And the tom-toms beat,And the low beating of the tom-tomsStirs your blood.
Words in this poem
- wisp n.
- A small bundle, as of straw or other like substance. [OE. wisp, wips; probably akin to D. & G. wisch, Icel. visk, and perhaps to L. virga a twig, rod. Cf. Verge a rod, Whisk, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Danse Africaine is in the public domain. This text is taken from The weary blues, Project Gutenberg ebook #74745; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Langston Hughes, Danse Africaine, in The Weary Blues (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #74745, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hughes-weary-blues/danse-africaine.html, id L01550.
Form and metre
Danse Africaine is 15 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in trochaic trimeter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 27% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 AABBC------DDAC tomsA · tomsA · slowB · lowB · bloodC · dance · girl · a · light · slowly · fire · beatD · beatD · tomsA · bloodC
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The low beating of the tom-toms, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| The slow beating of the tom-toms. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Low ... slow | 2 | ·· |
| Slow ... low— | 2 | ·· |
| Stirs your blood. | 3 | ··· |
| Dance! | 1 | · |
| A night-veiled girl | 4 | ···· |
| Whirls softly into a | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Circle of light. | 4 | /˘·· |
| Whirls softly ... slowly, | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| Like a wisp of smoke around the fire— | 10 | ········/˘ |
| And the tom-toms beat, | 5 | ····· |
| And the tom-toms beat, | 5 | ····· |
| And the low beating of the tom-toms | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Stirs your blood. | 3 | ··· |
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.