The song "Dance Me to the End of Love" depicts a cycle of traditional romantic (married), love but in this depiction the romance is intense. It is intensely felt and intensely needed from its youthful inception to its comforting final touch.
The intensity is expressed in part through the song's use of repetition, which along with rhyme is the most notable literary element in the poem. Not only does Cohen repeat the refrain "Dance me to the end of love," but he also repeats the opening phrases "Dance me to the wedding" and "burning violin," attaching these phrases to different moments in the life of the romance.
Using a connotative comparison to convey a lascivious notion of physical love in the second half of the first verse, Cohen connects physical intimacy with a notion of foreign-ness or taboo by linking sexuality to Babylon.
"Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of"
As the song goes on, the romance moves from a wedding to the idea of having children and Cohen here uses figurative language to great effect. In this verse, we see a notion that the love affair/marriage has been one of enduring affection that has built a household and finally entered into a state of age wherein the two people have begun to wear down.
"Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn"
The outworn curtains no longer provide a shield from what is outside and the shelter that the couple has built, metaphorically, is now reduced to tatters. The idea of what that tent stands for, however, remains intact. The metaphor of a "tent of shelter"might be taken as an important expression of the nature of love in this song - - love is a protective force.
The panic that haunts the speaker of the poem seems to relate to being alone. The relationship between the couple saves the speaker from suffering that fate, although the song presents this pseudo-narrative as a request. The cycle of the romantic affair is projected and, so, hypothetical; and it hypothetically functions as the fulfillment of a desire to love and to be loved.
The need to escape his panic and to engage in an affair of true love is intense. The need is part of the exhortation, the demand, which is given again and again.
"Dance me to the end of love."
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