Voice Of The Banjo

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <h4>THE VOICE OF THE BANJO</h4> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">In a small and lonely cabin out of noisy traffic's way,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Sat an old man, bent and feeble, dusk of face, and hair of gray,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">And beside him on the table, battered, old, and worn as he,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Lay a banjo, droning forth this reminiscent melody:</div> <br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">"Night is closing in upon us, friend of mine, but don't be sad;</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Let us think of all the pleasures and the joys that we have had.</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Let us keep a merry visage, and be happy till the last,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Let the future still be sweetened with the honey of the past.</div> <br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">"For I speak to you of summer nights upon the yellow sand,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">When the Southern moon was sailing high and silvering all the land;</div> <br/> <div class="i0">And if love tales were not sacred, there's a tale that I could tell</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Of your many nightly wanderings with a dusk and lovely belle.</div> <br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">"And I speak to you of care-free songs when labour's hour was o'er,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">And a woman waiting for your step outside the cabin door,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">And of something roly-poly that you took upon your lap,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">While you listened for the stumbling, hesitating words, 'Pap, pap.'</div> <br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">"I could tell you of a 'possum hunt across the wooded grounds,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">I could call to mind the sweetness of the baying of the hounds,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">You could lift me up and smelling of the timber that 's in me,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">Build again a whole green forest with the mem'ry of a tree.</div> <br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="i0">"So the future cannot hurt us while we keep the past in mind,</div> <br/> <div class="i0">What care I for trembling fingers,&mdash;what care you that you are blind?<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</SPAN></span></div> <br/> <div class="i0">Time may leave us poor and stranded, circumstance may make us bend;</div> <br/> <div class="i0">But they 'll only find us mellower, won't they, comrade?&mdash;in the end."</div> <br/></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />