"Fiddler Jones"
by Edgar Lee Masters
THE EARTH keeps some vibration going | |
There in your heart, and that is you. | |
And if the people find you can fiddle, | |
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. | |
What do you see, a harvest of clover? | 5 |
Or a meadow to walk through to the river? | |
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands | |
For beeves hereafter ready for market; | |
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts | |
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. | 10 |
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust | |
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; | |
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy | |
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.” | |
How could I till my forty acres | 15 |
Not to speak of getting more, | |
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos | |
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins | |
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? | |
And I never started to plow in my life | 20 |
That some one did not stop in the road | |
And take me away to a dance or picnic. | |
I ended up with forty acres; | |
I ended up with a broken fiddle— | |
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, | 25 |
And not a single regret.
Gerard van Honthorst, The Merry Fiddler
|
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver . . ."
(William Shakespeare's Othello, I.iii.88-90)
Friday, September 2, 2016
"Fiddler Jones"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment