You are great, O God, and greatly to be praised.
And my stereotypical soul praises you,
Stereotypically, using the words –
Casually unrhymed — prose in poetry’s clothing –
Sentiments as worn as platitudes –
Not mine. Not anybody’s.
Common, dime-a-dozen words –
And common souls too! Make no mistake:
Irrelevant, mediocre, worthless.
Accept, therefore, my sentiments,
Pitilessly plagiarized from other burdens to the ploughland.
I can’t come anywhere close to covering all the points in favor of social dance, or refuting the many arguments against it– but I’ve given a shot at some of them today. I know most of our readers and most of the editors share my opinions on this (as I have danced with many of them) but I’d like to hear what you think of how I come to my conclusions.
In 1848, in his book ‘A Fable for Critics’: the poet James Russell Lowell published these sarcastic words:
He who esteems the Virginia reel
A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
Than crushing His African children with slavery,
Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon
Are mounted for hell on the devil’s own pillion,
Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.
