James Whitcomb Riley

For you, I could forget the gay
Delirium of merriment,
And let my laughter die away
In endless silence of content.
    I could forget, for your dear sake,
    The utter emptiness and ache
    Of every loss I ever knew. -
    What could I not forget for you?

I could forget the just deserts
Of mine own sins, and so erase
The tear that burns, the smile that hurts,
And all that mars or masks my face.
    For your fair sake I could forget
    The bonds of life that chafe and fret,
    Nor care if death were false or true. -
    What could I not forget for you?

What could I not forget? Ah me!
One thing, I know, would still abide
Forever in my memory,
Though all of love were lost beside -
    I yet would feel how first the wine
  ...

TO WILLIAM MORRIS PIERSON

[1868-1870]

Of the wealth of facts and fancies
    That our memories may recall,
The old school-day romances
    Are the dearest, after all! - .
When some sweet thought revises
    The half-forgotten tune
That opened "Exercises"
    On "Friday Afternoon."

We seem to hear the clicking
    Of the pencil and the pen,
And the solemn, ceaseless ticking
    Of the timepiece ticking then;
And we note the watchful master,
    As he waves the warning rod,
With our own heart beating faster
    Than the boy's who threw the wad.

Some little hand uplifted,
    And the creaking of a shoe: -
A problem left unsifted
    For the teacher's hand to do:
The murmured hum of learning -
    And the ...

Friend of a wayward hour, you came
Like some good ghost, and went the same;
And I within the haunted place
Sit smiling on your vanished face,
    And talking with - your name.

But thrice the pressure of your hand -
First hail - congratulations - and
Your last "God bless you!" as the train
That brought you snatched you back again
    Into the unknown land.

"God bless me?" Why, your very prayer
Was answered ere you asked it there,
I know - for when you came to lend
Me your kind hand, and call me friend,
    God blessed me unaware.

A troth, and a grief, and a blessing,
Disguised them and came this way,
And one was a promise, and one was a doubt,
And one was a rainy day.

And they met betimes with this maiden,
And the promise it spake and lied,
And the doubt it gibbered and hugged itself,
And the rainy day - she died.

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
The last five years and better.    It ain't worth while to talk -

I've been too mean to tell it!    I've been so hard, you see,
And full of pride, and - onry - now there's the word for me -
Just onry - and to show you, I'll give my history
With vital points in question, and I think you'll all agree.

I was always stiff and stubborn since I could recollect,
And had an awful temper, and never would reflect;
And always into trouble - I remember once at school
The teacher tried to flog me, and I reversed that rule.

O I was bad I tell you!    And it's a funny move
That a fellow wild as I...

Say good-by er howdy-do -
What's the odds betwixt the two?
Comin' - goin', ev'ry day -
Best friends first to go away -
Grasp of hands you'd ruther hold
Than their weight in solid gold
Slips their grip while greetin' you. -
Say good-by er howdy-do!

Howdy-do, and then, good-by -
Mixes jes' like laugh and cry;
Deaths and births, and worst and best,
Tangled their contrariest;
Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell
Skeerin' up some funer'l knell. -
Here's my song, and there's your sigh. -
Howdy-do, and then, good-by!

Say good-by er howdy-do -
Jes' the same to me and you;
'Taint worth while to make no fuss,
'Cause the job's put up on us!
Some One's runnin' this concern
That's got nothin' else to learn:
Ef He's willin', we'll pul...

    Go, Winter!    Go thy ways!    We want again
    The twitter of the bluebird and the wren;
    Leaves ever greener growing, and the shine
            Of Summer's sun - not thine. -

    Thy sun, which mocks our need of warmth and love
    And all the heartening fervencies thereof,
    It scarce hath heat enow to warm our thin
            Pathetic yearnings in.

    So get thee from us!    We are cold, God wot,
    Even as thou art. - We remember not
    How blithe we hailed thy coming. - That was O
            Too long - too long ago!

    Get from us utterly!    Ho!    Summer then
    Shall spread her grasses where thy snows have been,
    And thy last icy footprint melt and mold
            In her first marigold.

"My grandfather Squeers," said The Raggedy Man,
As he solemnly lighted his pipe and began -

"The most indestructible man, for his years,
And the grandest on earth, was my grandfather Squeers!

"He said, when he rounded his three-score-and-ten,
'I've the hang of it now and can do it again!'

"He had frozen his heels so repeatedly, he
Could tell by them just what the weather would be;

"And would laugh and declare, 'while the Almanac would
Most falsely prognosticate, he never could!'

"Such a hale constitution had grandfather Squeers
That, 'though he'd used 'navy' for sixty odd years,

"He still chewed a dime's-worth six days of the week,
While the seventh he passed with a chew in each cheek:

"Then my grandfather S...

Granny's come to our house,
And ho! My lawzy-daisy!
All the childern round the place
Is ist a-runnin' crazy!
Fetched a cake fer little Jake,
And fetched a pie fer Nanny,
And fetched a pear fer all the pack
That runs to kiss their Granny!

Lucy Ellen's in her lap,
And Wade and Silas Walker
Both's a ridin' on her foot,
And 'Pollos on the rocker;
And Marthy's twins, from Aunt Marinn's
And little Orphant Annie,
All's a-eatin' gingerbread
And giggle-un at Granny!

Tells us all the fairy tales
Ever thought er wundered -
And 'bundance o' other stories -
Bet she knows a hunderd!

Bob's the one fer "Whittington,"
And "Golden Locks" fer Fanny!
Hear 'em laugh and clap their hands,
Listenin' at Granny!

"Jack the...

Sir Launcelot rode overthwart and endlong in a wide forest, and held no path but as wild adventure led him... And he returned and came again to his horse, and took off his saddle and his bridle, and let him pasture; and unlaced his helm, and ungirdled his sword, and laid him down to sleep upon his shield before the cross.- Age of Chivalary

Grant

What shall we say of the soldier. Grant,
His sword put by and his great soul free?
How shall we cheer him now or chant
His requiem befittingly?
The fields of his conquest now are seen
Ranged no more with his armed men -
But the rank and file of the gold and green
Of the waving grain is there again.

Though his valiant life is a nation's pride,
And his death heroic and half divine,
And our grief as great as the worl...

    Ho! green fields and running brooks!
    Knotted strings and fishing-hooks
    Of the truant, stealing down
    Weedy backways of the town.

    Where the sunshine overlooks,
    By green fields and running brooks,
    All intruding guests of chance
    With a golden tolerance,

    Cooing doves, or pensive pair
    Of picnickers, straying there -
    By green fields and running brooks,
    Sylvan shades and mossy nooks!

    And - O Dreamer of the Days,
    Murmurer of roundelays
    All unsung of words or books,
    Sing green fields and running brooks!

Pap's got his patent-right, and rich is all creation;
But where's the peace and comfort that we all had before?
Le's go a-visitin' back to Griggsby's Station -
Back where we ust to be so happy and so pore!

The likes of us a-livin' here! It's jest a mortal pity
To see us in this great big house, with cyarpets on the stairs,
And the pump right in the kitchen! And the city! City! City
And nothin' but the city all around us ever'wheres!

Climb clean above the roof and look from the steeple,
And never see a robin, nor a beech or ellum tree!
And right here in ear-shot of at least a thousan' people,
And none that neighbors with us or we want to go and see!

Le's go a-visitin' back to Griggsby's Station -
Back where the latch-strings a-hangin' from the door,
And...

Fold the little waxen hands
Lightly.    Let your warmest tears
Speak regrets, but never fears, -
    Heaven understands!
Let the sad heart, o'er the tomb,
Lift again and burst in bloom
Fragrant with a prayer as sweet
As the lily at your feet.

Bend and kiss the folded eyes -
They are only feigning sleep
While their truant glances peep
    Into Paradise.
See, the face, though cold and white,
Holds a hint of some delight
E'en with Death, whose finger-tips
Rest upon the frozen lips.

When, within the years to come,
Vanished echoes live once more -
Pattering footsteps on the floor,
    And the sounds of home, -
Let your arms in fancy fold
Little Harlie as of old -
As of old and as he waits
At the City's golden gates.

I

Has she forgotten? On this very May
We were to meet here, with the birds and bees,
As on that Sabbath, underneath the trees
We strayed among the tombs, and stripped away
The vines from these old granites, cold and gray -
And yet indeed not grim enough were they
To stay our kisses, smiles and ecstasies,
Or closer voice-lost vows and rhapsodies.
Has she forgotten - that the May has won
Its promise? - that the bird-songs from the tree
Are sprayed above the grasses as the sun
Might jar the dazzling dew down showeringly?
Has she forgotten life - love - everyone -
Has she forgotten me - forgotten me?


II

Low, low down in the violets I press
My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear,
And yet hold silence, though I call her dear,

Just drifting on together -
        He and I -
As through the balmy weather
        Of July
Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded
Each in each - by zephyrs wedded -
Touring upward, giddy-headed,
        For the sky.

And, veering up and onward,
        Do we seem
Forever drifting dawnward
        In a dream,
Where we meet song-birds that know us,
And the winds their kisses blow us,
While the years flow far below us
        Like a stream.

And we are happy - very -
        He and I -
Aye, even glad and merry
        Though on high
The heavens are sometimes shrouded
By the midnight storm, and clouded
Till the pallid moon is crowded
        From the sky.

My spirit ne'er expresses
        Any choice
But ...

There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw
Long ere the crash of speech. - He broke the spell -
The host: - The Traveler's story, told so well,
He said, had wakened there within his breast
A yearning, as it were, to know the rest -
That all unwritten sequence that the Lord
Of Righteousness must write with flame and sword,
Some awful session of His patient thought -
Just then it was, his good old mother caught
His blazing eye - so that its fire became
But as an ember - though it burned the same.
It seemed to her, she said, that she had heard
It was the Heavenly Parent never erred,
And not the earthly one that had such...

I

He called her in from me and shut the door.
And she so loved the sunshine and the sky! -
She loved them even better yet than I
That ne'er knew dearth of them - my mother dead,
Nature had nursed me in her lap instead:
And I had grown a dark and eerie child
That rarely smiled,
Save when, shut all alone in grasses high,
Looking straight up in God's great lonesome sky
And coaxing Mother to smile back on me.
'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly
Came to me, nestled in the fields beside
A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide -
The sunshine beating in upon the floor

Like golden rain. -
O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again
And leave me! I had cried, but that an ache
Within my throat so gripped it I could make
No sound but a thi...

    O her beautiful eyes! they are as blue as the dew
    On the violet's bloom when the morning is new,
    And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun
    O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run:
    As the morn shirts the mists and the clouds from the skies -
    So I stand in the dawn of her beautiful eyes.

    And her beautiful eyes are as midday to me,
    When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee,
    And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat,
    And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet
    And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies -
    So I swoon in the noon of her beautiful eyes.

    O her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own
    As a glory glanced down from the glare of The Throne;
 ...