polka dots

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Regarding the polka craze of the 1840's:

 From a poem, "Infatuation", by Park Benjamin, in "United States Democratic
Review" 15(77), Nov. 1844:

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...
So smile the rainbows cloud and vapor through,
So smile the roses ‘mid their tears of dew.
Now o’er the world Infatuation sheds
The Polka’s poppies into vacant heads.
Asleep, the Polka seems a tangled maze,
Awake, the Polka prompts a hundred lays;
Polka the halls, the balls, the calls resound,
And Polka skims, Camilla-like, the ground.
Where roves in groves the nonsense-doating nymph,
And dreams by streams as smooth and clear as lymph,
Some leaf as brief as woman’s love flits by,
And brings dear Polka to her pensive eye.
So in swift circles, backward forward wheeled,
The Polka’s graces were at first revealed:
Perchance some posture-master--happy man!
 From Nature drew the Polka’s pretty plan.
Oh, wondrous figure, exquisitely stepp’d!
In thee who would not, should not be adept?
Oh, Polka! Polka! wherefore art thou so?
I’ve asked ten dandies, and the ten "don’t know."
How wide, how absolute must be thy reign,
When ancient dames attempt the task in vain,
When modern Shatterlys affect the beau,
And feebly twirl the paralytic toe!
Oblivious, wrapped in thy delicious trance,
See girls, turned Bayadères, complete the dance;
With grace so witching and with art so true,
Ellsler might pale with envy at the view,
Cerito languish, Taglioni sigh,
To think their nights of triumph fleeted by.
The modest waltz, by Byron fitly sung,
And coyly tripping from Anacreon’s tongue,
Yields to the Polka’s more bewildering arts,
That weave new meshes over female hearts.
We want a poet--can our clime afford
One pure as Little, moral as my Lord?
Oh, spar’d by satire, let the passions play,
While music speaks what language cannot say!
I love to see, where Fashion holds her court,
Such harmless freedom with such pleasant sport;
It shows a proper disregard of forms,
The brain it softens and the bosom warms,
And this great truth in striking light reveals--
Where wit is absent, heads succumb to heels.
...

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-- Doug Wilson