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.