The Harlot's House by
Oscar WildeWe 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 play
The "Treues Liebes Herz" of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.
They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon 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.
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 play
The "Treues Liebes Herz" of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.
They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon 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.
An issue that came up recently in class was the use of incorrect terminology to describe muscle actions and joint actions. Many times, people will say things such as "flex" your muscle, or he/she "over-extended" a muscle. When we describe motion, there are two things to look at; how the joint angle changes, and how the length of the muscle changes. To keep things simple, I will use the knee as an example. The primary motions, or joint actions, at the knee are flexion and extension. When a persons straightens his/her knee, this is called knee extension. When a person bends his/her knee, this is called knee flexion. The terms flexion and extension refer to changes in a joint angle, not changes in a muscle. Flexion and extension also occur at other joints, such as the hip, shoulder, and elbow. Now, let's examine what happens to the large muscle group located on the anterior (front) portion of the thigh. This is the quadriceps muscle group. Muscles either shorten, lengthen, or stay the same length. When you extend your knee, such as during the upward phase of a squat, the quadriceps muscle group shortens. This shortening of a muscle under tension is known as a concentric muscle action. When you flex your knee, such as during the downward phase of a squat, the quadriceps muscle group lengthens under tension. This is called an eccentric muscle action. If you were to squat down and hold your knee at a constant joint angle (90 degrees of knee flexion), the length of the quadriceps muscle group would remain constant under tension. This is known as an isometric muscle action. To summarize, terms such as flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction refer to changes in joint angles, terms such as concentric, eccentric, and isometric refer to changes in muscle length. It is correct to say a person hyper-extended his/her knee or elbow, but it is not correct to say that he/she hyper-extended a muscle.
