The fiddler raised his violin,
And to perform did next begin—
Sing lotus-flower, papyrus stiff,
Sarcophagus and hieroglyph!
The district, since Amenophis,
Had never heard the like of this;
(Oh, to have seen the fiddler man
As up and down the scale he ran!)
That crocodile sat down to hear,
And to his eye there came a tear;
He turned it over in his mind;
His tail lay limp and long behind.
Affettuoso was the plan
Which struck at first that fiddler man;
Allegro next—his soul was stirr’d—
Con molto brio was the word.
At this the alligator brute—
Or crocodile, if that will suit—
Rose, much excited, from his seat,
And danced like mad, with heart and heat.
Sing Pompey, plectrum, strings and pegs,
Ichneumons, sand, and serpents’ eggs,
Cheops, Cephrenes, Memnon, Sphinx—
“I knew it!”—so that fiddler thinks.
“I knew,” said he, with joy and jest,
“That music soothes the savage breast;”
He swept the strings with maddening go,
From presto to prestissimo.
But though the brute had dropped his plan
Of eating up at once the man,
It did not seem, his ways were such,
That music yet had soothed him much.
In fact he leapt and danced like mad;
He danced with all the legs he had;
Our friend, with violin to shoulder,
Sat, proudly playing, on a boulder.
He played until his arm grew weak,
And heat-drops gathered on his cheek;
He saw there would be mischief in it
If he but dropped his bow a minute!