Afterwhiles. James Whitcomb Riley

of fancy tingled

       With the tang of muscadine.

       And the golden-banded bees,

       Droning o'er the flowery leas,

       They bridled, reigned, and rode away

       Across the fragrant breeze,

       Till in hollow oak and elm

       They had groomed and stabled them

       In waxen stalls oozed with dews

       Of rose and lily-stem.

       Where the dusty highway leads,

       High above the wayside weeds

       They sowed the air with butterflies

       Like blooming flower-seeds,

       Till the dull grasshopper sprung

       Half a man's height up, and hung

       Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,

       And sung and sung and sung!

       And they loitered, hand in hand,

       Where the snipe along the sand

       Of the river ran to meet them

       As the ripple meets the land,

       Till the dragon-fly, in light

       Gauzy armor, burnished bright,

       Came tilting down the waters

       In a wild, bewildered flight.

       And they heard the killdee's call,

       And afar, the waterfall,

       But the rustle of a falling leaf

       They heard above it all;

       And the trailing willow crept

       Deeper in the tide that swept

       The leafy shallop to the shore,

       And wept and wept and wept!

       And the fairy vessel veered

       From its moorings—tacked and steered

       For the centre of the current

       Sailed away and disappeared:

       And the burthen that it bore

       From the long-enchanted shore—

       "Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!"

       I murmur evermore.

       For the South Wind and the Sun,

       Each so loves the other one,

       For all his jolly folly

       And frivolity and fun,

       That our love for them they weigh

       As their fickle fancies may,

       And when at last we love them most,

       They laugh and sail away.

The Lost Kiss

       Table of Contents

      I put by the half-written poem,

       While the pen, idly trailed in my hand,

       Writes on—, "Had I words to complete it,

       Who'd read it, or who'd understand?"

       But the little bare feet on the stairway,

       And the faint, smothered laugh in the hall,

       And the eerie-low lisp on the silence,

       Cry up to me over it all.

       So I gather it up—where was broken

       The tear-faded thread of my theme,

       Telling how, as one night I sat writing,

       A fairy broke in on my dream,

       A little inquisitive fairy—

       My own little girl, with the gold

       Of the sun in her hair, and the dewy

       Blue eyes of the fairies of old.

       'Twas the dear little girl that I scolded—

       "For was it a moment like this,"

       I said, "when she knew I was busy,

       To come romping in for a kiss—?

       Come rowdying up from her mother,

       And clamoring there at my knee

       For 'One 'ittle kiss for my dolly,

       And one 'ittle uzzer for me!"

       God pity, the heart that repelled her,

       And the cold hand that turned her away,

       And take, from the lips that denied her,

       This answerless prayer of to-day!

       Take Lord, from my mem'ry forever

       That pitiful sob of despair,

       And the patter and trip of the little bare feet,

       And the one piercing cry on the stair!

       I put by the half-written poem,

       While the pen, idly trailed in my hand

       Writes on—, "Had I words to complete it

       Who'd read it, or who'd understand?"

       But the little bare feet on the stairway,

       And the faint, smothered laugh in the hall,

       And the eerie-low lisp on the silence,

       Cry up to me over it all.

The Sphinx

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      I know all about the Sphinx—

       I know even what she thinks,

       Staring with her stony eyes

       Up forever at the skies.

       For last night I dreamed that she

       Told me all the mystery—

       Why for aeons mute she sat—:

       She was just cut out for that!