dance mehitabel dance
caper and shake a leg
what little blood is left
will fizz like wine in a keg

In these lines Marquis’s speaker urges “mehitabel” to dance with abandon—“caper and shake a leg”—as a defiant, bodily assertion of life. The image of the “little blood” left that will “fizz like wine in a keg” suggests vitality that can still effervesce even when one feels depleted: a last reserve of spirit that can be stirred into celebration. The tone mixes comic slang with a slightly desperate edge, implying that exuberance is not merely pleasure but a strategy for endurance. Read this way, the dance becomes a metaphor for refusing resignation and coaxing joy out of scarcity.