STREET MUSICIANS
By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
You’re sitting on your window seat
Beneath a cloudless moon;
You hear a sound that seems to wear
The semblance of a tune,
As if a broken fife should strive
To drown a cracked bassoon.
And nearer, nearer still, the tide
Of music seems to come,
There’s something like a human voice
And something like a drum;
You sit in speechless agony,
Until your ear is numb.
Poor “Home, Sweet Home” would seem to be
A very dismal place;
Your “Auld Acquaintance,” all at once,
Is altered in the face;
Their discords sting thro’ Burns and Moore,
Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
You think they are crusaders sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of Sentiment
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody
And break the legs of Time.
But, hark! the air again is still,
The music all is ground,
And silence like a poultice comes
To heal the blows of sound;
It cannot be—it is, it is—
A hat is going round!
No! pay the dentist when he leaves
A fracture in your jaw,
And pay the owner of the bear
That stunned you with his paw,
And buy the lobster that has had
Your knuckles in his claw.
But if you are a portly man,
Put on your fiercest frown,
And talk about a constable
To turn them out of town;
Then close your sentence with an oath,
Then shut the window down!
And if you are a slender man,
Not big enough for that,
Or if you cannot make a speech
Because you are a flat,
Go very quietly and drop
A button in the hat!