A Dream Of Long Ago

Lying listless in the mosses
Underneath a tree that tosses
Flakes of sunshine, and embosses
    Its green shadow with the snow -
Drowsy-eyed, I sink in slumber
Born of fancies without number -
Tangled fancies that encumber
    Me with dreams of long ago.

Ripples of the river singing;
And the water-lilies swinging
Bells of Parian, and ringing
    Peals of perfume faint and fine,
While old forms and fairy faces
Leap from out their hiding-places
In the past, with glad embraces
    Fraught with kisses sweet as wine.

Willows dip their slender fingers
O'er the little fisher's stringers,
While he baits his hook and lingers
    Till the shadows gather dim;
And afar off comes a calling
Like the sounds of water falling,
With the lazy echoes drawling
    Messages of haste to him.

Little naked feet that tinkle
Through the stubble-fields, and twinkle
Down the winding road, and sprinkle
    Little mists of dusty rain,
While in pasture-lands the cattle
Cease their grazing with a rattle
Of the bells whose clappers tattle
    To their masters down the lane.

Trees that hold their tempting treasures
O'er the orchard's hedge embrasures,
Furnish their forbidden pleasures
    As in Eden lands of old;
And the coming of the master
Indicates a like disaster
To the frightened heart that faster
    Beats pulsations manifold.

Puckered lips whose pipings tingle
In staccato notes that mingle
Musically with the jingle-
    Haunted winds that lightly fan
Mellow twilights, crimson-tinted
By the sun, and picture-printed
Like a book that sweetly hinted
    Of the Nights Arabian.

Porticoes with columns plaited
And entwined with vines and freighted
With a bloom all radiated
    With the light of moon and star;
Where some tender voice is winging
In sad flights of song, and singing
To the dancing fingers flinging
    Dripping from the sweet guitar.

Would my dreams were never taken
From me: that with faith unshaken
I might sleep and never waken
    On a weary world of woe!
Links of love would never sever
As I dreamed them, never, never!
I would glide along forever
    Through the dreams of long ago.

James Whitcomb Riley

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. He was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and the "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and children's poetry respectively. Over his career, Riley authored approximately 1,000 poems, including "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man". His influence extended into the 20th century, and his works continued to be celebrated for their nostalgic and rural themes.

James Whitcomb Riley

Tom Johnson's Quit.

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

A Dream Of Autumn.

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

John Alden And Percilly.

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

The Serenade

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

English

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The Song Of Yesterday

I

But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots.

My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.

And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found dewy pathways through the wheat;
And out again
Where, down the lane,
The dust was dimpled with the rain.


II

But yesterday: -
Adream, astray,
From morning's red to evening's gray,
O'er dales and hills
Of daffodils
And lorn sweet-fluting whippoorwills.

I knew nor cares
Nor tears nor prayers -
A mortal god, crowned unawares
With sunset - a...

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A Dream Of Autumn.

    Mellow hazes, lowly trailing
    Over wood and meadow, veiling
    Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing
        Sailor-like to foreign lands;
    And the north-wind overleaping
    Summer's brink, and floodlike sweeping
    Wrecks of roses where the weeping
        Willows wring their helpless hands.

    Flared, like Titan torches flinging
        Flakes of flame and embers, springing
    From the vale the trees stand swinging
        In the moaning atmosphere;
    While in dead'ning-lands the lowing
    Of the cattle, sadder growing,
    Fills the sense to overflowing
        With the sorrow of the year.

    Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter
    Sings the brook in rippled meter
    Under boughs that lithely teeter
        Lorn birds, ...

James Whitcomb Riley

Only A Dream

Only a dream!
            Her head is bent
Over the keys of the instrument,
While her trembling fingers go astray
In the foolish tune she tries to play.
He smiles in his heart, though his deep, sad eyes
Never change to a glad surprise
As he finds the answer he seeks confessed
In glowing features, and heaving breast.

Only a dream!
            Though the fete is grand,
And a hundred hearts at her command,
She takes no part, for her soul is sick
Of the Coquette's art and the Serpent's trick, -
She someway feels she would like to fling
Her sins away as a robe, and spring
Up like a lily pure and white,
And bloom alone for HIM to-night.

Only a dream
            That the fancy weaves.
The lids unfold like the rose's leaves,
And th...

James Whitcomb Riley

An Old Sweetheart Of Mine

As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

'Tis a fragrant retrospection - for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine.

Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices o...

James Whitcomb Riley

A Backward Look

As I sat smoking, alone, yesterday,
And lazily leaning back in my chair,
Enjoying myself in a general way -
Allowing my thoughts a holiday
From weariness, toil and care, -
My fancies - doubtless, for ventilation -
Left ajar the gates of my mind, -
And Memory, seeing the situation,
Slipped out in street of "Auld Lang Syne."

Wandering ever with tireless feet
Through scenes of silence, and jubilee
Of long-hushed voices; and faces sweet
Were thronging the shadowy side of the street
As far as the eye could see;
Dreaming again, in anticipation,
The same old dreams of our boyhood's days
That never come true, from the vague sensation
Of walking asleep in the world's strange ways.

Away to the house where I was born!
And there was the selfsame...

James Whitcomb Riley

Voices Of The Night - Prelude.

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound;--

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
A...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow