Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 98: THE MAD FIDDLER

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

THE MAD FIDDLER

I sleep beneath a bracken sheet

In sunlight or in rain,

The road dust burns my naked feet,

The sunrays sear my brain;

But children love my fiddle’s sound

And if a lad be straying,

His mother knows he may be found

Where old Mad Larry’s playing.

O fiddle, let us follow, follow,

Till we see my Eileen’s face,

Through the moonlight like a swallow

Off she flew to some far place.

O, did you ever love a lass?

I loved a lass one day,

And she would lie upon the grass

And sing while I would play.

She was a cruel, lovely thing,

Nor heart nor soul have I,

For Eileen took them that soft spring

When she flew to the sky.

So fiddle, let us follow, follow,

Till we see my Eileen’s face,

Through the moonlight like a swallow

Off she flew to some far place.