My dancin’ - days is over

 

 

What is it in old fiddle-chunes

 

’at makes me ketch my breath

 

And ripples up my backbone tel I’m

 

tickled most to death?—

 

Kind o’ like that sweet-sick feelin’, in

 

the long sweep of a swing,

 

The first you ever swung in, with

 

yer first sweetheart, i jing!—

 

Yer first picnic—yer first ice-cream—

 

yer first o’ever’thing

 

’At happened ’fore yer dancin’-

 

days wuz over!

 

 

I never understood it—and I s’pose I

 

never can,—

 

But right in town here, yisterd’y I

 

heard a pore blind man

 

A-fiddlin’ old “Gray Eagle”—And—

 

sir! I jes’ stopped my load

 

O’ hay and listened at him—yes,

 

and watched the way he “bow’d,”—

 

And back I went, plum forty year’,

 

with boys and girls I knowed

 

And loved, long ’fore my dancin’-

 

days wuz over!—

 

 

At high noon in yer city,—with yer

 

blame’ Magnetic-Cars

 

A-hummin’ and a screechin’ past—and

 

bands and G. A. R.’s

 

A-marchin’ and fire-ingines.—All

 

the noise, the whole street through,

 

Wuz lost on me!—I only heard a

 

whipperwill er two,

 

It ’peared-like, kind o’ callin’ ’crost

 

the darkness and the dew,

 

Them nights afore my dancin’-

 

days wuz over.

 

 

Tuz Chused’y-night at Wetherell’s er

 

We’n’sd’y-night at Strawn’s,

 

Er Fourth-o-July-night at uther

 

Tomps’s house er John’s—

 

With old Lew Church from Sugar

 

Crick, with that old fiddle he

 

Had sawed clean through the Army,

 

from Atlanty to the sea—

 

And yit he’d fetched her home ag’in,

 

so’s he could play fer me

 

Onc’t more afore my dancin’-days

 

wuz over!

 

 

The woods ’at’s all be'n cut away wuz

 

growin’ same as then;

 

The youngsters all wuz boys ag’in ’at’s

 

now all oldish men;

 

And all the girls ’at then wuz girls—

 

I saw'em, one and all,

 

As plain as then—the middle-sized,

 

the short-and-fat, and tall—

 

And ’peared-like, I danced “Tucker”

 

fer ’em up and down the wall

 

Jes’ like afore my dancin’-days wuz over!

 

 

The facts is, I wuz dazed so’at I clean

 

fergot jes’ where

 

I railly wuz,—a-blockin’ streets,

 

and still a-standin’ there:

 

I heard the po-leece yellin’, but my

 

ears wuz kind o’ blurred—

 

My eyes, too, fer the odds o’ that,—

 

bekase I thought I heard

 

My wife ’at’s dead a-laughin’-like,

 

and jokin’, word-fer-word

 

Jes’ like afore her dancin’-days wuz over.

                       James Whitcomb Riley