Private Theatricals

A quite convincing axiom
    Is, "Life is like a play";
For, turning back its pages some
    Few dog-eared years away,
        I find where I
        Committed my
Love-tale - with brackets where to sigh.

I feel an idle interest
    To read again the page;
I enter, as a lover dressed,
    At twenty years of age,
        And play the part
        With throbbing heart,
And all an actor's glowing art.

And she who plays my Lady-love
    Excels! - Her loving glance
Has power her audience to move -
    I am her audience. -
        Her acting tact,
        To tell the fact,
"Brings down the house" in every act.

And often we defy the curse
    Of storms and thunder-showers,
To meet together and rehearse
    This little play of ours -
        I think, when she
        "Makes love" to me,
She kisses very naturally!

    .    .    .    .    .    .

Yes; it's convincing - rather -
    That "Life is like a play":
I am playing "Heavy Father"
    In a "Screaming Farce" to-day,
        That so "brings down
        The house," I frown,
And fain would "ring the curtain down."

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

Dan Paine.

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

Granny

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

A Liz Town Humorist

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

Mr. Hammond's Parable

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Verses Written To Be Spoken By Mrs. Siddons.

Yes, 'tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
I wake, I breathe, and am myself again.
Still in this nether world; no seraph yet!
Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set,
With troubled step to haunt the fatal board,
Where I died last--by poison or the sword;
Blanching each honest cheek with deeds of night,
Done here so oft by dim and doubtful light.
    --To drop all metaphor, that little bell
Call'd back reality, and broke the spell.
No heroine claims your tears with tragic tone;
A very woman--scarce restrains her own!
Can she, with fiction, charm the cheated mind,
When to be grateful is the part assign'd?
Ah, No! she scorns the trappings of her Art;
No theme but truth, no prompter but the heart!
    But, Ladies, say, must I alone unmask?
Is here no o...

Samuel Rogers

Plays

Alas, how soon the hours are over
Counted us out to play the lover!
And how much narrower is the stage
Allotted us to play the sage!
But when we play the fool, how wide            
The theatre expands! beside,
How long the audience sits before us!
How many prompters! what a chorus!

Walter Savage Landor

The Play

In the rosy light of my day's fair morning,
    Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west,
Ere even a shadow of night gave warning
    When life seemed only a pleasure quest,
Why then all humour and comedy scorning -
    I liked high tragedy best.

I liked the challenge, the fierce fought duel,
    With a death or a parting in every act.
I liked the villain to be more cruel
    Than the basest villain could be in fact:
For it fed the fires of my mind with the fuel
    Of the things that my life lacked.

But as time passed on, and I met real sorrow,
    And she played at night on the stage -my heart,
I found I could not forget on the morrow
    The pain I had felt in her tragic part.
For alas! no longer I needed to borrow
    My grief from the act...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Come, My Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, how wise is love -
Love grown old and grey with years,
Love whose blood is thinned with tears.

Philosophic lover I,
Broke my heart, its love run dry,
And I warble passion's words
But to hear them sing like birds.

When the lightning struck my side,
Love shrieked and for ever died,
Leaving nought of him behind
But these playthings of the mind.

Now the real play is over
I can only act a lover,
Now the mimic play begins
With its puppet joys and sins.

When the heart no longer feels,
And the blood with caution steals,
Then, ah! then - my heart, forgive! -
Then we dare begin to live.

Dipped in Stygian waves of pain,
We can never feel again;
Time may hurl his...

Richard Le Gallienne

An Epilogue.

    You saw our wife was chaste, yet thoroughly tried,
    And, without doubt, ye are hugely edified;
    For, like our hero, whom we show'd to-day,
    You think no woman true, but in a play.
    Love once did make a pretty kind of show:
    Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
    But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
    Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
    Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation:
    In comedy your little selves you meet;
    'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges Street.
    Smile on our author then, if he has shown
    A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
    Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
    Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
    The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
    She pu...

John Dryden

At The Play

Just above the boxes and where the high lights fall
Looketh down a carven face from out the gilded wall.

Van Dyke beard and broidered ruff silently confess
That he lived - and loved perchance - in days of Good Queen Bess.
(Laces fine and linen sheer, curled and perfumed hair
Well became those gentlemen of gay, insouciant air.)

See! He gazeth evermore at the stage below;
Noteth well the players as they quickly come and go;
Queens and kings and maidens fair, motley fools and friars,
Lords and ladies, stately dames, mounted knights and squires.

Well he knoweth all of them, all the grave and gay,
These are they he dreamt of in the far and far away;
Saints and sinners, see they come down the bygone years,
And the world still shares with them its laughter and its...

Virna Sheard