  ONE day a fiddler from the North, Out Memphis way, went walking forth; He smoked his pipe and winked his lids, And said, “Ah, ah! the Pyramids? In this that fiddler took good heed; The Pyramids were there indeed; Sing Amon-RÂ, sing Gizeh town, Cheops, Cephrenes, mummy brown! Thus said he on the banks of Nile, When out there crawled a crocodile, And when he turned, more scared than hurt, The creature seized him by the skirt. The crocodile was fierce and strong, And twenty mortal feet was long. The fiddler said, “It has been guessed That music soothes the savage breast.” He drew his skirt—there being a pause— From out the alligator’s jaws; For, crocodile or alligator, The beast was something of that nature. Sing bulrushes, sing cats and leeks, Sing tawny gods with senseless beaks, Sing scarabÆi, if you’ve patience, Isis, Osiris, inundations! 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! For in that alligator’s look He read, as plain as in a book, “Play on, or I will eat you yet, With appetite the sharper set!” Just as he thought he soon must faint (And his emotions who can paint?) He felt, and saw on looking round, A curious trembling of the ground. Thinks he, “This dancing crocodile Is shaking up the land of Nile”— He looked again, and saw, in places, The pyramids leap from their bases! As six or seven together rushed, He cried, “Confound it! I am crushed!” But, happy chance! a moment later They fell and crushed the alligator. Sing Cleopatra’s almond eye, Sing reeds and hippopotami, Sing tamarisk-trees by Moeris Lake, And mud left in the sun to bake! Then, as the fiddler wiped his brow, Says he, “I feel exhausted now!” Those ruins he no more regards Than any fallen house of cards. Out on the sands he chanced to find A bit of temple to his mind, And, as he sat down in the shade, There came an Ethiop to his aid. “De Hyksos,” said that nigger lad, “Dis way some secret cellarage had; Yah, massa, yah, de best ob wine; De Shepherd Kings, dey know’d de Rhine.” He quaffed those hocks, that fiddler bold, Hocks five and thirty centuries old; The cellar-man was older still— Sing Typhon, Ptah, or what you will. Sing Ra, sing Sos, sing Seb, sing Khem, Sing Mycerinus, after them; Sing Diodorus Siculus, Who tells untruths, for all his fuss; Sing Manetho; but keep this clue— The tale which I have told is true. |
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