Not from the northern road,

Not from the southern way,

First his wild music flowed

Into the village that day.


He suddenly was in the lane,

The people came out to hear,

He suddenly went, and in vain

Their hopes wished him to appear.


His music strange did fret

Each heart to wish 't was free.

It was not a melody, yet

It was not no melody.


Somewhere far away,

Somewhere far outside

Being forced to live, they

Felt this tune replied.


Replied to that longing

All have in their breasts,

The lost sense belonging

To forgotten quests.


The happy wife now knew

That she had married ill,

The glad fond lover grew

Weary of loving still,


The maid and boy felt glad

That they had dreaming only,

The lone hearts that were sad

Felt somewhere less lonely.


In each soul woke the flower

Whose touch leaves earthless dust,

The soul's husband's first hour,

The thing completing us,


The shadow that comes to bless

From kissed depths unexpressed,

The luminous restlessness

That is better than rest.


As he came, he went.

They felt him but half-be.

Then he was quietly blent

With silence and memory.


Sleep left again their laughter,

They tranced hope ceased to last

And but a small time after

They knew not he had passed.


Yet when the sorrow of living,

Because life is not willed,

Comes back in dreams' hours, giving

A sense of life being chilled


Suddenly each remembers.

It glows life a coming moon

On where their dream-life embers.

The mad fiddler's tune.

Têtes Raides (Les) Lyrics