Joel Elias Springarn

 

Joel Elias Springarn (1875 New York City - 1939), American poet, educator and literary critic.

 

Dickson, Edward R.: Poems on the dance. An anthology. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1921.

 

 

                Isadora Duncan dancing

 

Dance, and let tired eyes, weary of seeing only

 

Feed for once their fill upon immortal music;

 

Dance, and let the dreams of poets half-forgotten,

 

Speak through you as never spoke their printed pages;

 

Dance, and let the pictured visions of the painters

 

Move and speak and breathe and tear our quickened

 

     heart-strings;

 

Dance, and in the throbbing joy of rhythm and gesture,

 

Music, poetry, and painting melt together.

 

Now I know the power, understand the secret,

 

Why the old religious took to their bosom,

 

Wound themselves about you, called your magic sacred,

 

Why we moderns, lacking faith, have lived without you:

 

While you dance, once more the Aegean dances with

 

   you; All the heathen black folk whisper secrets to you;

 

On the western plains the red man stops and listens;

 

Gods and idols, faith and beauty, always craving

 

Human motion married to immortal music.