The Little Lady

O The Little Lady's dainty
    As the picture in a book,
And her hands are creamy-whiter
    Than the water-lilies look;
Her laugh's the undrown'd music
    Of the maddest meadow-brook. -
Yet all in vain I praise The Little Lady!

Her eyes are blue and dewy
    As the glimmering Summer-dawn, -
Her face is like the eglantine
    Before the dew is gone;
And were that honied mouth of hers
    A bee's to feast upon,
He'd be a bee bewildered, Little Lady!

Her brow makes light look sallow;
    And the sunshine, I declare,
Is but a yellow jealousy
    Awakened by her hair -
For O the dazzling glint of it
    Nor sight nor soul can bear, -
So Love goes groping for The Little Lady.


And yet she's neither Nymph nor Fay,
    Nor yet of Angelkind: -
She's but a racing school-girl, with
    Her hair blown out behind
And tremblingly unbraided by
    The fingers of the Wind,
As it wildly swoops upon The Little Lady.

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

Told By "The Noted Traveler"

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

Green Fields And Running Brooks

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

The Old Swimmin'-Hole

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

Dear Hands.

James Whitcomb Riley, Simple Poetry

English

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There is a princess in the South
    About whose beauty rumors hum
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A Wraith Of Summertime.

    In its color, shade and shine,
    'T was a summer warm as wine,
    With an effervescent flavoring of flowered bough and vine,
    And a fragrance and a taste
    Of ripe roses gone to waste,
    And a dreamy sense of sun- and moon- and star-light interlaced.

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    All the wealth of out-of-doors,
    And woos our feet o'er velvet paths and honeysuckle floors.

    'Twas a summertime long dead, -
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    O they all are ghostly things -
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Orlie Wilde

A goddess, with a siren's grace, -
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.

Wrought was she of a painter's dream, -
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.

I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned - REturned - and thus beguiled
Me with the tale of Orlie Wilde: -

"We artists live ideally:
We breed our firmest facts of air;
We make our own reality -
We dream a thing and it is so.
The fairest scenes we ever see
Are mirages of memory;
The sweetest thoughts we ever know
We plagiarize from Long Ago:
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A Southern Singer.

    Written In Madison Caweln's "Lyrics and Idyls."

    Herein are blown from out the South
    Songs blithe as those of Pan's pursed mouth -
    As sweet in voice as, in perfume,
    The night-breath of magnolia-bloom.

    Such sumptuous languor lures the sense -
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    The eyes blur as a nymph's might blur,
    With water-lilies watching her.

    You waken, thrilling at the trill
    Of some wild bird that seems to spill
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James Whitcomb Riley

He Called Her In

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
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No sound but a thi...

James Whitcomb Riley

Her Beautiful Eyes.

    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;
 ...

James Whitcomb Riley