James Whitcomb Riley Poems

There is a princess in the South
About whose beauty rumors hum
Like honey-bees about the mouth
...

To the Elect of Love,--or side-by-side
In raptest ecstasy, or sundered wide
By seas that bear no message to or fro
...

The world is turned ag'in' me,
And people says, 'They guess
That nothin' else is in me
...

O in the depths of midnight
What fancies haunt the brain!
When even the sigh of the sleeper
Sounds like a sob of pain.
...

Leedle Dutch baby haff come ter town!
Jabber und jump till der day gone down--
Jabber und sphlutter und sphlit hees jaws--
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A strange life--strangely passed!
We may not read the soul
When God has folded up the scroll
In death at last.
...

I

He called her in from me and shut the door.
And she so loved the sunshine and the sky!--
...

Back from a two-years' sentence!
And though it had been ten,
You think, I were scarred no deeper
In the eyes of my fellow-men.
...

As a harvester, at dusk,
Faring down some woody trail
Leading homeward through the musk
Of may-apple and pawpaw,
...

Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,
With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,
And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes
...