“It is sweet to dance to violinsWhen love and life are fair:To dance to flutes, to dance to lutesIs delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!”

“Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.”

“Mi bella princesa, your funny little dwarf will never dance again. It is a pity; for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile. 'But why will he never dance again?' asked the Infanta laughing. “Because his heart is broken”, answered the Chamberlain.”

“We caught the tread of dancing feet,We loitered down the moonlit street,And stopped beneath the harlot's house.Inside, above the din and fray,We heard the loud musicians playThe 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.Like strange mechanical grotesques,Making fantastic arabesques,The shadows raced across the blind.We watched the ghostly dancers spinTo sound of horn and violin,Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.Like wire-pulled automatons,Slim silhouetted skeletonsWent sidling through the slow quadrille,Then took each other by the hand,And danced a stately saraband;Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressedA phantom lover to her breast,Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.Sometimes a horrible marionetteCame out, and smoked its cigaretteUpon the steps like a live thing.Then, turning to my love, I said,'The dead are dancing with the dead,The dust is whirling with the dust.'But she--she heard the violin,And left my side, and entered in:Love passed into the house of lust.Then suddenly the tune went false,The dancers wearied of the waltz,The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.And down the long and silent street,The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,Crept like a frightened girl.”

“The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.”

“Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life.”

“And they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them.”