Old Tom

Old Tom watched the river flow

Staring at the pool below

A ragged, scarecrow silhouette

The kind of man you'd not forget

Every inch the pauper king

He tied his coat with a piece of string

Lived his life from day to day

He got by in his own way

Why he lived the life he led we never asked and he never said

We never knew the rhyme or the reason

And just where he came from no one knows, no one cared much I suppose

Just another lonely soul left with nowhere else to go

He owned a fine old violin

The music came from deep within

He never had that much to say

He said it all in the tunes he'd play

He never stood upon no stage

He played those tunes for a beggars' wage

Did it all without regret

For a bottle of beer or a cigarette

Seems like he was born to wander free, it must have been his destiny

To roam each winding highway and bye way

Music filled his universe, both a blessing and a curse

Held him from the day he fell under its enchanting spell

He lived out on the edge of town

Where darkness fell when the sun went down

He lay his head on a bed of straw

Beneath the stars on the forest floor

There he lay alone each night

Out of mind and out of sight

Reflected in the campfire glow

He took his fiddle and he raised the bow

You'd look at him and time stood still

He must have been old as the hills

Like some picture in a frame

He never changed, he stayed the same

He played the part in the clothes he wore

What you got was what you saw

Solitary, destitute

There for all to persecute

Would you look at him, he'd hear them say

What's he doing here anyway

They made him pay the price for being different

And like children playing children's games

Laughed at him and called him names

Who were they to criticise the way that such men lived their lives

Old Tom watched the river flow

Staring at the pool below

A ragged scarecrow silhouette

The kind of man you'd not forget