Fiddler Jones by Edgar Lee Masters

Saw this fiddler made of paper mache’ and it reminded me of Masters’ Poem: Fiddler Jones

FIDDLER JONES
by Edgar Lee Masters
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The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle--
And a broken laugh, 
and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.
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Edgar Lee Masters, (1868 -1950), wrote 39 books and Spoon River Anthology, where Fiddler Jones was taken from. Masters was noted for 243 epitaphs as well. He married twice and eventually stopped working as a lawyer in order to devote more time to writing.

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And thanks to forthemo -for noting Chagall’s fiddler could fit in here:

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