OFTTIMES when recollections throng | |
Serenely back from childhoods 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. | |
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Dan HarrisonI 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. | |
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I do not know what tunes he played, | |
I cannot name one melody; | |
His instrument was never made | |
In old Cremona oer 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. | |
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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. | |
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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 fancys magic sway, | |
The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. | 40 |
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