Explore "The Fiddler" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE fiddler knows what's brewing / To the lilt of his lyric wiles: / The fiddler knows what rueing / Will come of this night's smiles!
He sees couples join them for dancing, / And afterwards joining for life, / He sees them pay high for their prancing / By a welter of wedded strife.
He twangs: "Music hails from the devil, / Though vaunted to come from heaven, / For it makes people do at a revel / What multiplies sins by seven.
"There's many a heart now mangled, / And waiting its time to go, / Whose tendrils were first entangled / By my sweet viol and bow! "