"Whether it be trivial
or something that Dante said...."
It's one of my favorite sequences, the cosmic Fairy Dance:
O, seductive combination of the graces, the brilliancy, the joys of loveliest life!—that givest grace to loveliness, poetry to motion, and gala gloss to all surroundings—that charmest by music, that expandest all hearts, and exaltest all souls to the power of love—the thronged, the gay, the glittering ball!
O, soft viol, and tinkling guitar—last echo of old romance!—to this solitude you can bring bright memories! Methinks I see a "high hall," whose lights might shame the day; the many white-robed fair,-the far-reaching couples, floating in that fairy dance,—revolving, like the moon around the sun, in circling circles.
The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!
If it be not there,—or if it be clouded, no winter twilight more dismal then, than that glaring ball-room mockery.
-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853 Southern Literary Messenger 313: and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 409-410
"Often whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning mountain when all aglow with a ballroom blaze." -- The Encantadas
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