Fiddler's Farewell

Leonora Speyer

Fold now the song within the songster.
Small sturdy one,
Roistering down the centuries,
Drunk with the fiddlers' fingers,
(Never a dearth of these,
The living crowding where the dead have been).
Pure, promiscuous, dandled violin!
Caesar of sound, my songs in passing, cry
Morituri te salutamus! . . . and passing, die.

Fold now the song away.
Close the lid down
Upon the gradual dismay
Of disconcerted singing,
Unloose the fingers' clinging
That has so lost its cunning,
Turn from the faltering renown,
Fame of the little town
After the flag-hung city;
Deny the ruin pity!
Pity? Yes, for the failing song
That, like a droughty stream,
Crawls, drips,
Over an arid land

(Yet deep enough to drown),
O violin that slips
From the relinquishing hand,
Brown brightness hid-
Let fall the incurious lid.

Let me find words
With which to sing of silence,
Better than all this blurred half-sound
Of tattered music trailing on the ground,
(That was a banner in the wind!)
Words,
And their pacing pride,
For the frustrated heart,
That stoic singer in the side,
Unviolined!

Be not afraid,
My songs, my full-throats,
Be not stampeded into muffled herds
Mouthing and terrified-
O fierce white music that I made,
Proud notes,
Chords, choirs of taut tuned strings,
And slender strength
Of bow that was a bough:
Tread this last length

Of sound, mellow and muted, staid,
 Pass unbewildered now
 With this processional of rhymed recording words.
 Be not afraid!

 Words for my fiddle now,
 Abundance of goodly words!
 My deft, my dear,
 My witty one
 With your brave answer ever ready,
 My box of birds,
 Crony and hearty,
- Winged hubbub,
 Tool,
 And tear-
 Fiddle, fiddle,
 To leave you lying here,
 To leave you lying here!

 In time,
 A stranger with the supple fiddler's hand,
 And the rapt eye
 That sees the sound sublime,
 Will come,
 (Must come, I wish it so!)
 To coax these stagnant strings,
Kindle their numb
And awful apathy with one imperative blow
Of the fleet accurate bow;
Release the fiddle-cry!

O faithless!
Faithful only to sound
(That loud-lipped passer-by),
You will forget straightway
The player for the player-
And both for the tune you play.
In time I too shall turn
To others' music,
Shall learn
A niggardly delight
In some slight
Lord of nimble fingers,
Tossing me sops of song;
The long
And measured wisdom of wide symphonies
Will find me listening;
A singer, a child's hand on the candid keys,
A whistle on the wing;
All these!

T'll not disdain the fine
And effervescent draught,
Filling the echoing cup

(That was so full)
With others' wine.
T'll not refuse to drink.

But first
I must know thirst. . . .
So must this violin of mine,
I think.

How still it lies.
An empty shell along the empty sand
Is not more still-
But put your hand
To the shining thing
As music passes!
Do you feel the quickening
Of the languid wood?
Come! lay your ear
To the shell . ..
(Heart, leaning near,
So near)...

Do you hear
The stirring and the throbbing
Above your tuneless sobbing?