Fiddler Jones by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

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?

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.

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 / 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 / That someone 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, / And not a single regret.