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.

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.

(excerpted from Hard Times Come Again No More by Stephen Foster)

 

He was an Odessa boy with a daddy in the money

He played for Mojo back in the boom

Drove a Corvette, took what he wanted

People, they learned to give him lots of room

​

Well he never learned to work

But that never really mattered

'Cause the dark crude flowed

The wild oats scattered

The dark crude flowed

He fought, he flattered

And he got what he wanted

It was the only thing that mattered

​

Well life was easy, and the big jacks pumped

Pulling cash from the Permian field

There were cabinets full of high-grade scotch

Garage full of high-speed steel

​

He never learned to work 

But that never really mattered

'Cause the dark crude flowed

The wild oats scattered

The dark crude, it flowed

He fought, he flattered

And he got what he wanted

It was the only thing that mattered

​

Then he killed a girl when he rolled the Corvette

Daddy’s money made her lawyers go away

His mother bought vodka with all that cash

She kind of knew, yeah she kind of knew 

​

Well he’s an old man now

Lives on his dead daddy’s place

Never took a wife

Gonna die without a trace

See he loved the girl who was pinned in the Vette

He talks to her everyday

Her face was blood and diamonds

He remembers her that way 

​

Well he never learned to work

But that never really mattered

'Cause the dark crude flowed

The wild oats scattered

Dark crude, it flowed

He fought, he flattered

And he got what he wanted

It was the only thing that mattered 

​

Dark crude, it flowed

He fought, he flattered

And he got what he wanted

It was the only thing that mattered 

​

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times come again no more.

(excerpted from Hard Times Come Again No More by Stephen Foster)

​