To Jessie’s Dancing Feet

By William De Lancey Ellwanger


HOW, as a spider’s web is spun
With subtle grace and art,
Do thy light footsteps, every one,
Cross and recross my heart!
Now here, now there, and to and fro,
Their winding mazes turn;
Thy fairy feet so lightly go
They seem the earth to spurn.
Yet every step leaves there behind
A something, in thy dance,
That serves to tangle up my mind
And all my soul entrance.

How, as the web the spiders spin
And wanton breezes blow,
Thy soft and filmy laces in
A swirl around thee flow!
The cobweb ’neath thy chin that ’s crossed
Remains demurely put,
While those are ever whirled and tossed
That show thy saucy foot;
That show the silver grayness of
Thy stockings’ silken sheen,
And mesh of snowy skirts above
The silver that is seen.

How, as the spider, from his web,
Dangles in light suspense,
Do thy sweet measures’ flow and ebb
Sway my enraptured sense!
Thy fluttering lace, thy dainty airs,
Thy every charming pose—
There are not more alluring snares
To bind me with than those.
Swing on! Sway on! With easy grace
Thy witching steps repeat!
The love I dare not—to thy face—
I offer at thy feet.


Hello everybody! I really need help understanding this poem....I truely cannot get the concept. If you can, please give me some feedback! Thank you!

The narrator is watching a girl dancing. Her skill and beauty have made him fall in love with her. He's using the image of a spider spinning its web to picture her. (I don't think I'd like to be pictured as a spider, but tastes differ)

pam

The popular image of a spider is that of a furry, bloated, malevolent creepy-crawly, but some web spinning spiders are so small they arouse no arachnophobia, and some - such as orb spiders in tropical rainforests - are so colorful they can be admired for their beauty almost as much as the butterflies they catch.

I think the focus of the poet's comparison here is on the art and beauty of the spider's web, rather than on the spider. Such webs are miracles of design. They can look beautiful, in dew and in sunlight. They have been romanticised as gossamer; though that's one word this poet missed using. Look at the words he did use: 'subtle', 'light', 'fairy', 'soft', 'filmy', 'silken', 'dainty', 'alluring'. Surely any girl should be flattered!



Post Edited (10-08-04 23:25)

I also need help with this poem. However I could use the help in coming up with an "insightful" (as my teacher said) central idea for a five paragraph essay on it. I have many ideas, but just can't find a way to sum them up. One idea that I would like to use basically deals with the fact that Jessie's dancing is described as beautiful just as a spiders web it beautiful, yet she is essentially trapping the narrator and tangling him into loving her. Thus like a web hides an evil spider, Jessie's elegant dancing hides the way she in entrancing the narrator. The narrator seems to be almost obsessed with her from the way the whole poem is written with his following her every move (in particular the last line) which is acually a bad thing for him. Well, I don't know... I'm not making a lot of sense, but at least some of my ideas are there. I was even considering relating it to drug addiction because people say when they take ecstacy, for example, it makes them feel happy and the world around them beautiful... just as Jessie's dancing seems beautiful but it's causing the narrator to become obsessed with (shows in the last line) and tangled up in his desire/love for her and unable to get out (crossing over my heart...). Or is the whole drug addiction stretching it too far??? I don't really know how I would make it into five paragraphs, but I'm trying to pull something original out of the poem since my teacher's main focus is that we write about something insightful. Please help ASAP, anything you could do to help me kind of organize and collect some thoughts under the umbrella of some sort of central idea. Thanks!!!

^ sry about the typos, I know there are a bunch such as: just as a spider's web is beautiful... please bear with me, I was just in a hurry because I need to figure out the central idea for an essay test tomorrow (we were just given the poems today so I didn't just procrastinate) and my ideas are all over the place!