Wait For The Morning.

Wait for the morning: - It will come, indeed,
As surely as the night hath given need.
The yearning eyes, at last, will strain their sight
No more unanswered by the morning light;
No longer will they vainly strive, through tears,
To pierce the darkness of thy doubts and fears,
But, bathed in balmy dews and rays of dawn,
Will smile with rapture o'er the darkness drawn.

Wait for the morning, O thou smitten child,
Scorned, scourged and persecuted and reviled -
Athirst and famishing, none pitying thee,
Crowned with the twisted thorns of agony -
No faintest gleam of sunlight through the dense
Infinity of gloom to lead thee thence -
Wait for the morning: - It will come, indeed,
As surely as the night hath given need.

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

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Time 2

Wait for the morning! Ah! We wait indeed
For daylight, we who toss about through stress
Of vacant-armed desires and emptiness
Of all the warm, warm touches that we need,
And the warm kisses upon which we feed
Our famished lips in fancy! May God bless
The starved lips of us with but one caress
Warm as the yearning blood our poor hearts bleed...!
A wild prayer! Bite thy pillow, praying so -
Toss this side, and whirl that, and moan for dawn;
Let the clock's seconds dribble out their woe,
And Time be drained of sorrow! Long ago
We heard the crowing cock, with answer drawn
As hoarsely sad at throat as sobs... Pray on!

James Whitcomb Riley

In The Dark.

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

A sense of awe and of wonder
    I may never well define, -
For the thoughts that come in the shadows
    Never come in the shine.

The old clock down in the parlor
    Like a sleepless mourner grieves,
And the seconds drip in the silence
    As the rain drips from the eaves.

And I think of the hands that signal
    The hours there in the gloom,
And wonder what angel watchers
    Wait in the darkened room.

And I think of the smiling faces
    That used to watch and wait,
Till the click of the clock was answered
    By the click of the opening gate. -

They are not there now in the evening...

James Whitcomb Riley

When Evening Shadows Fall

When evening shadows fall,
    She hangs her cares away
Like empty garments on the wall
    That hides her from the day;
And while old memories throng,
    And vanished voices call,
She lifts her grateful heart in song
    When evening shadows fall.

Her weary hands forget
    The burdens of the day.
The weight of sorrow and regret
    In music rolls away;
And from the day's dull tomb,
    That holds her in its thrall,
Her soul springs up in lily bloom
    When evening shadows fall.

O weary heart and hand,
    Go bravely to the strife -
No victory is half so grand
    As that which conquers life!
One day shall yet be thine -
    The day that waits for all
Whose prayerful eyes are things divine
    When evening shad...

James Whitcomb Riley

Dusk

The frightened herds of clouds across the sky
Trample the sunshine down, and chase the day
Into the dusky forest-lands of gray
And sombre twilight. Far and faint, and high,
The wild goose trails his harrow, with a cry
Sad as the wail of some poor castaway
Who sees a vessel drifting far astray
Of his last hope, and lays him down to die.
The children, riotous from school, grow bold
And quarrel with the wind whose angry gust
Plucks off the summer-hat, and flaps the fold
Of many a crimson cloak, and twirls the dust
In spiral shapes grotesque, and dims the gold
Of gleaming tresses with the blur of rust.

James Whitcomb Riley

In The Evening

I

In the evening of our days,
When the first far stars above
Glimmer dimmer, through the haze,
Than the dewy eyes of love,
Shall we mournfully revert
To the vanished morns and Mays
Of our youth, with hearts that hurt, -
In the evening of our days?


II

Shall the hand that holds your own
Till the twain are thrilled as now,
Be withheld, or colder grown?
Shall my kiss upon your brow
Falter from its high estate?
And, in all forgetful ways,
Shall we sit apart and wait -
In the evening of our days?


III

Nay, my wife - my life! - the gloom
Shall enfold us velvetwise,
And my smile shall be the groom
Of the gladness of your eyes:
Gently, gently as the dew
Mingles with the darkening maze,

James Whitcomb Riley

The Watches Of The Night.

    O the waiting in the watches of the night!
    In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
    The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
    The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
    Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows -
    The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose -
    In the dreary, weary watches of the night!

    Dark - stifling dark - the watches of the night!
    With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
    With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight! -
    What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought that may not be redressed -
    Of tears we did not brush away - of lips we left unpressed,
    And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
    Ah! the empt...

James Whitcomb Riley