The Tales of Harid Harper

HIs hand on the golden strings,
Head bowed, with a mild voice
Telling us how things used to be:
More valuable than turquoise
Did such things then seem to me
In the golden years of childhood,
Shine and sparkle and leap and run,
Before forever dimmed the sun.

Harid Harper, with his face mild,
Would visit our town each fall.
And when we hard of his coming,
We would run one and all,
To find him already strumming,
In the golden years of childhood,
Shine and sparkle and leap and run,
Before forever dimmed the sun.

He would tell us with golden voice
Of dragons swimming in warm blue seas,
Of golden peacocks that sang the hours
Every hour from within ivory trees,
Of a witch who dwelled in a tower,
In the golden years of childhood,
Shine and sparkle and leap and run,
Before forever dimmed the sun.

It is strange that I cannot remember
The words of Harid Harper's tales.
It is only the emotions I recall,
The feeling of standing within green vales,
Or in the midst of a woodland hall,
In the golden years of childhood,
Shine and sparkle and leap and run,
Before forever dimmed the sun.

But perhaps that is what is important:
That feeling and that pure emotion,
The thing that sometimes a soul saves,
The warmth and vibrancy of the ocean,
Rather than the words that explain the waves.
Those were golden years of childhood,
Shine and sparkle and leap and run,
Before forever dimmed the sun.