The Dance of Dinwiddie

A lyrical narrative poem recreates a spring evening when townspeople arrive for a boisterous country dance at a farmhouse on the river, sketching fiddlers, dancers, flirtations, and a showy local versifier called the Oracle. The speaker evokes the house, trees, and music with detailed, songlike description while tracing sly looks, teasing banter, and the social rhythms of courtship. Beneath the revelry a rising flood gathers force, later consuming the homestead and recasting the celebration as a remembered, almost haunted scene. Themes of communal pleasure, memory, and nature's unpredictable power run through vivid portraits and rhythmic verse.