OFTTIMES when recollections throng | |
| Serenely back from childhood’s years, | |
| Awaking thoughts that slumbered long, | |
| Compelling smiles or starting tears, | |
| The music of a violin | 5 |
| Seems through my window floating in; | |
| I think I hear from far away | |
| The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | |
| |
| Dan Harrison—I see him plain, | |
| Beside the roaring, winter hearth, | 10 |
| Playing away with might and main, | |
| His honest face aglow with mirth; | |
| And when he laid his bow aside, | |
| “Well done! well done!” he gayly cried; | |
| Well done! well done! indeed were they, | 15 |
| The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | |
| |
| I do not know what tunes he played, | |
| I cannot name one melody; | |
| His instrument was never made | |
| In old Cremona o’er the sea; | 20 |
| And yet I sadly, sadly fear | |
| Such tunes I never more may hear, | |
| Some were so mournful, some so gay, | |
| The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | |
| |
| I have been witness to the skill | 25 |
| Of many a master of the bow, | |
| But none has had the power to thrill | |
| Like him I celebrate; and so | |
| I sit and strive, not all in vain, | |
| To hear his minstrelsy again; | 30 |
| And from the past I call to-day | |
| The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | |
| |
| And with the music, as it floats, | |
| Seraphic harping faintly blends; | |
| I catch amid the mingling notes | 35 |
| Familiar voices of old friends; | |
| And all my pensive soul within | |
| Is melted by the violin, | |
| That yields, at fancy’s magic sway, | |
| The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | 40 |
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