And it sounds with sudden longing,
Cheeks aglow and burning bones,
Futile yearning, searing pleasures,
And with jealousies wild tones.
Now it trinkles like a goblet,
Rising to a maddened flare,
Followed by a heart-sent wailing,
As if someone tore his hair.
And the fourth string answers sadly
To the crying, sighing spell,
With a heavy bell-like clanging,
Mournful, as a final knell.
And it howls like winds and flurries,
Racing through the restless night,
Then it whispers, lonely deathlike,
Like a dying man’s last plight.
Then a scream . . . and every string now
Screams with gladness, quivers, cries,
And the gypsy hugs his fiddle,
Fire gleaming in his eyes.
Finis! Midnight! All in stupor,
Just the master is awake.
“What quaint music, tell me brother
What does each string indicate?”
And the gypsy looks about him
Where each drunken servant sleeps,
Something like his fiddle’s echo
Into his soft voice now creeps.
“Master, you will not believe me
That a string can have a soul.
Anger, gladness, all I thought of
Somehow in my fiddle stole.
Yes I had a bent old mother,
Good God knows her love for me,
Just to still our endless hunger,
She told fortunes for a fee.
112
