Blind Fiddler - Wilkie (Exhibition, 1807.)

With mirth unfeigned the cottage chimney rings,
Though only vocal with four fiddle-strings:
And see, the poor blind fiddler draws his bow,
And lifts intent his time-denoting toe;
While yonder maid, as blythe as birds in June,
You almost hear her whistle to the tune!
Hard by, a lad, in imitative guise,
Fixed, fiddle-like, the broken bellows plies;
Before the hearth, with looks of honest joy,
The father chirrups to the chattering boy,
And snaps his lifted thumbs with mimic glee,
To the glad urchin on his mother's knee!

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

The Convent

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Lady M----ve (Sketches In The Exhibition, 1805)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Spring - Cuckoo. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

On Accidentally Meeting A Lady Now No More

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

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At Madame Tussaud's In Victorian Years

"That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night
Here fiddled four decades of years ago;
He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,
Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

"But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,
And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;
Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,
In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

"Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem
That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;
To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him
With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal."

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly - that fiddler - whoe...

Thomas Hardy

The Blind Man Of Salisbury Cathedral. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

There is a poor blind man, who, every day,
In summer sunshine, or in winter's rain,
Duly as tolls the bell, to the high fane
Explores, with faltering footsteps, his dark way,
To kneel before his Maker, and to hear
The chaunted service, pealing full and clear.
Ask why alone in the same spot he kneels
Through the long year. Oh, the wide world is cold,
As dark, to him! Here he no longer feels
His sad bereavement. Faith and Hope uphold
His heart; he feels not he is poor and blind,
Amid the unpitying tumult of his mind.
As through the aisles the choral anthems roll,
His soul is in the choirs above the skies,
And songs far off of angel companies,
When this dim earth hath perished like a scroll.
Oh! happy if the rich, the vain, the proud -
The plumed actors in l...

William Lisle Bowles

Blind Jack

    I had fiddled all day at the county fair.
    But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire,
    Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle
    To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses
    Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out
    As the carriage fell in the ditch,
    And was caught in the wheels and killed.
    There's a blind man here with a brow
    As big and white as a cloud.
    And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,
    Writers of music and tellers of stories
    Sit at his feet,
    And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.

Edgar Lee Masters

The Blind Grandfather. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

Though grandfather has long been blind,
And his few locks are gray,
He loves to hear the summer wind
Round his pale temples play.

We'll lead him to some quiet place,
Some unfrequented nook,
Where winds breathe soft, and wild-flowers grace
The borders of the brook.

There he shall sit, as in a dream,
Though nought can he behold,
Till the brook's murmuring flow shall seem
The voice of friends of old.

Think no more of them, aged man,
For here thou hast no friend;
Think, since this life is but a span,
Of joys that have no end.

William Lisle Bowles

The Blind Boy

"I have no master," said the Blind Boy,
"My mother, 'Dame Venus' they do call;
Cowled in this hood she sent me begging
For whate'er in pity may befall.

"Hard was her visage, me adjuring, -
'Have no fond mercy on the kind!
Here be sharp arrows, bunched in quiver,
Draw close ere striking - thou art blind.'

"So stand I here, my woes entreating,
In this dark alley, lest the Moon
Point with her sparkling my barbed armoury
Shine on my silver-lacèd shoon.

"Oh, sir, unkind this Dame to me-ward;
Of the salt billow was her birth ...
In your sweet charity draw nearer
The saddest rogue on Earth!"

Walter De La Mare

Willie's Lady

The Text is from the lost Fraser-Tytler-Brown MS., this ballad luckily having been transcribed before the MS. disappeared. Mrs. Brown recited another and a fuller version to Jamieson.


The Story.--Willie's mother, a witch, displeased at her son's choice, maliciously arrests by witchcraft the birth of Willie's son. Willie's travailing wife sends him again and again to bribe the witch, who refuses cup, steed, and girdle. Here our version makes such abrupt transitions, that it will be well to explain what takes place. The Belly Blind or Billie Blin (see Young Bekie, First Series, pp. 6, 7) advises Willie to make a sham baby of wax, and invite his witch-mother to the christening. Willie does so (in stanzas lost between our 33 and 34); the witch, believing the wax-baby to be flesh and blood, betrays all her craft by aski...

Frank Sidgwick