cleve callison’s blog

A song popped up on my iPod’s DJ shuffle this week I hadn’t heard or thought of in a while — Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.” Here’s a link to the James Taylor/Yo-Yo Ma/Edgar Meyer version.

Foster is often dismissed as a sentimentalizer of the old antebellum days and ways  — think “My Old Kentucky Home” — but the lyrics to “Hard Times” pack a real wallop:

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.

Chorus:
Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.