Saturday stop and think
I've had the Stephen Foster tune, Hard Times Come Again No More damn around in my head those previous couple of days. Foster wrote it in 1854 in reaction to a string of personal setbacks he lived via. There's some thing about a line the chorus that's continually appealed to me, "Many days you have got lingered round my cabin door/ oh difficult times come once more no greater." It conjures such an photograph for me. Anyhow, in case you're not acquainted with that music here are the lyrics. It could have been written the day before today morning while the Dow dropped below 8000 for the first time in I do not know how many years.
People have lived through some distance worse than what's happening today. We'll get via it and be higher off for having finished so.
(Chorus)And here's what it sounds like.
Oh hard instances come once more no greater.
Tis a dirge this is murmured across the lowly grave
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a sigh that is wafted throughout the stricken wave,
(Chorus)
Oh hard instances come once more no greater.
Though her voice might be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
With a worn coronary heart whose better days are o'er:
There's a faded drooping maiden who toils her lifestyles away,
(Chorus)
Oh hard instances come once more no greater.
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
While we are trying to find mirth and splendor and music mild and gay,
(Chorus)
Oh hard instances come once more no greater.
Many days you've got lingered around my cabin door;
Hard Times, difficult instances, come once more no more
There's a tune, the sigh of the weary,
Oh hard instances come once more no greater.
Many days you've got lingered around my cabin door;
Hard Times, difficult instances, come once more no more
Tis the track, the sigh of the weary,
Chorus:
Oh Hard times come once more no extra.
There's a song as a way to linger for all time in our ears;
While we all sup sorrow with the terrible;
Let us pause in existence's pleasures and rely its many tears,