James Whitcomb Riley

Heat-Lightning


There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw
Long ere the crash of speech.--He broke the spell--
The host:--The Traveler's story, told so well,
He said, had wakened there within his breast
A yearning, as it were, to know _the rest_--
That all unwritten sequence that the Lord
Of Righteousness must write with flame and sword,
Some awful session of His patient thought--
Just then it was, his good old mother caught
His blazing eye--so that its fire became
But as an ember--though it burned the same.
It seemed to her, she said, that she had heard
It was the _Heavenly_ Parent never erred,
And not the _earthly_ one that had such grace:
'Therefore, my son,' she said, with lifted face
And eyes, 'let no one dare anticipate
The Lord's intent. While _He_ waits, _we_ will wait'
And with a gust of reverence genuine
Then Uncle Mart was aptly ringing in-


''_If the darkened heavens lower,
Wrap thy cloak around thy form;
Though the tempest rise in power,
God is mightier than the storm!_''

Which utterance reached the restive children all
As something humorous. And then a call
For _him_ to tell a story, or to 'say
A funny piece.' His face fell right away:
He knew no story worthy. Then he must
_Declaim_ for them: In that, he could not trust
His memory. And then a happy thought
Struck some one, who reached in his vest and brought
Some scrappy clippings into light and said
There was a poem of Uncle Mart's he read
Last April in '_The Sentinel_.' He had
It there in print, and knew all would be glad
To hear it rendered by the author.

And,
All reasons for declining at command
Exhausted, the now helpless poet rose
And said: 'I am discovered, I suppose.
Though I have taken all precautions not
To sign my name to any verses wrought
By my transcendent genius, yet, you see,
Fame wrests my secret from me bodily;
So I must needs confess I did this deed
Of poetry red-handed, nor can plead


One whit of unintention in my crime--
My guilt of rhythm and my glut of rhyme.-


'Maenides rehearsed a tale of arms,
And Naso told of curious metat_mur_phoses;
Unnumbered pens have pictured woman's charms,
While crazy _I_'ve made poetry _on purposes!_'


In other words, I stand convicted--need
I say--by my own doing, as I read.

Her Beautiful Hands

Your hands--they are strangely fair!
O Fair--for the jewels that sparkle there,-Fair--
for the witchery of the spell
That ivory keys alone can tell;
But when their delicate touches rest
Here in my own do I love them best,
As I clasp with eager, acquisitive spans
My glorious treasure of beautiful hands!


Marvelous--wonderful--beautiful hands!
They can coax roses to bloom in the strands
Of your brown tresses; and ribbons will twine,
Under mysterious touches of thine,
Into such knots as entangle the soul
And fetter the heart under such a control
As only the strength of my love understands--
My passionate love for your beautiful hands.


As I remember the first fair touch
Of those beautiful hands that I love so much,
I seem to thrill as I then was thrilled,
Kissing the glove that I found unfilled--
When I met your gaze, and the queenly bow,
As you said to me, laughingly, 'Keep it now!' . . .
And dazed and alone in a dream I stand,
Kissing this ghost of your beautiful hand.


When first I loved, in the long ago,
And held your hand as I told you so--
Pressed and caressed it and gave it a kiss
And said 'I could die for a hand like this!'
Little I dreamed love's fullness yet
Had to ripen when eyes were wet
And prayers were vain in their wild demands
For one warm touch of your beautiful hands.


. . . . . . . . .
Beautiful Hands!--O Beautiful Hands!
Could you reach out of the alien lands
Where you are lingering, and give me, to-night,
Only a touch--were it ever so light--
My heart were soothed, and my weary brain
Would lull itself into rest again;
For there is no solace the world commands
Like the caress of your beautiful hands.

Harlie


Fold the little waxen hands
Lightly. Let your warmest tears
Speak regrets, but never fears,--
Heaven understands!
Let the sad heart, o'er the tomb,
Lift again and burst in bloom
Fragrant with a prayer as sweet
As the lily at your feet.

Bend and kiss the folded eyes--
They are only feigning sleep
While their truant glances peep
Into Paradise.
See, the face, though cold and white,
Holds a hint of some delight
E'en with Death, whose finger-tips
Rest upon the frozen lips.

When, within the years to come,
Vanished echoes live once more--
Pattering footsteps on the floor,
And the sounds of home,--
Let your arms in fancy fold
Little Harlie as of old--
As of old and as he waits
At the City's golden gates.

He And I

Just drifting on together--
He and I--
As through the balmy weather
Of July
Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded
Each in each--by zephyrs wedded--
Touring upward, giddy-headed,
For the sky.


And, veering up and onward,
Do we seem
Forever drifting dawnward
In a dream,
Where we meet song-birds that know us,
And the winds their kisses blow us,
While the years flow far below us
Like a stream.


And we are happy--very--
He and I--
Aye, even glad and merry
Though on high
The heavens are sometimes shrouded
By the midnight storm, and clouded
Till the pallid moon is crowded
From the sky.


My spirit ne'er expresses
Any choice
But to clothe him with caresses
And rejoice;
And as he laughs, it is in
Such a tone the moonbeams glisten
And the stars come out to listen
To his voice.


And so, whate'er the weather,
He and I,--
With our lives linked thus together,
Float and fly
As two thistle-tufts imbedded
Each in each--by zephyrs wedded--
Touring upward, giddy-headed,
For the sky.

Grant At Rest-- August 8, 1885

Sir Launcelot rode overthwart and endlong in a wide forest, and held no
path but as wild adventure led him... And he returned and came again to his
horse, and took off his saddle and his bridle, and let him pasture; and
unlaced his helm, and ungirdled his sword, and laid him down to sleep upon
his shield before the cross. --Age of Chivalary


_Grant_


What shall we say of the soldier. Grant,
His sword put by and his great soul free?
How shall we cheer him now or chant
His requiem befittingly?
The fields of his conquest now are seen
Ranged no more with his armed men--
But the rank and file of the gold and green
Of the waving grain is there again.


Though his valiant life is a nation's pride,
And his death heroic and half divine,
And our grief as great as the world is wide,
There breaks in speech but a single line--:
We loved him living, revere him dead--!
A silence then on our lips is laid:
We can say no thing that has not been said,
Nor pray one prayer that has not been prayed.


But a spirit within us speaks: and lo,
We lean and listen to wondrous words
That have a sound as of winds that blow,
And the voice of waters and low of herds;
And we hear, as the song flows on serene,
The neigh of horses, and then the beat
Of hooves that skurry o'er pastures green,
And the patter and pad of a boy's bare feet.


A brave lad, wearing a manly brow,
Knit as with problems of grave dispute,
And a face, like the bloom of the orchard bough,
Pink and pallid, but resolute;
And flushed it grows as the clover-bloom,
And fresh it gleams as the morning dew,
As he reins his steed where the quick quails boom
Up from the grasses he races through.


And ho! As he rides what dreams are his?
And what have the breezes to suggest--?
Do they whisper to him of shells that whiz
O'er fields made ruddy with wrongs redressed?
Does the hawk above him an Eagle float?
Does he thrill and his boyish heart beat high,
Hearing the ribbon about his throat
Flap as a Flag as the winds go by?



And does he dream of the Warrior's fame--
This Western boy in his rustic dress?
For in miniature, this is the man that came
Riding out of the Wilderness--!
The selfsame figure-- the knitted brow--
The eyes full steady-- the lips full mute--
And the face, like the bloom of the orchard bough,
Pink and pallid, but resolute.


Ay, this is the man, with features grim
And stoical as the Sphinx's own,
That heard the harsh guns calling him,
As musical as the bugle blown,
When the sweet spring heavens were clouded o'er
With a tempest, glowering and wild,
And our country's flag bowed down before
Its bursting wrath as a stricken child.


Thus, ready mounted and booted and spurred,
He loosed his bridle and dashed away--!
Like a roll of drums were his hoof-beats heard,
Like the shriek of the fife his charger's neigh!
And over his shoulder and backward blown,
We heard his voice, and we saw the sod
Reel, as our wild steeds chased his own
As though hurled on by the hand of God!


And still, in fancy, we see him ride
In the blood-red front of a hundred frays,
His face set stolid, but glorified
As a knight's of the old Arthurian days:
And victor ever as courtly too,
Gently lifting the vanquished foe,
And staying him with a hand as true
As dealt the deadly avenging blow.


So brighter than all of the cluster of stars
Of the flag enshrouding his form to-day,
His face shines forth from the grime of wars
With a glory that shall not pass away:
He rests at last: he has borne his part
Of salutes and salvos and cheers on cheers--
But O the sobs of his country's heart,
And the driving rain of a nations tears!

Green Fields And Running Brooks

Ho! green fields and running brooks!
Knotted strings and fishing-hooks
Of the truant, stealing down
Weedy backways of the town.


Where the sunshine overlooks,
By green fields and running brooks,
All intruding guests of chance
With a golden tolerance,


Cooing doves, or pensive pair
Of picnickers, straying there--
By green fields and running brooks,
Sylvan shades and mossy nooks!


And--O Dreamer of the Days,
Murmurer of roundelays
All unsung of words or books,
Sing green fields and running brooks!

Grandfather Squeers

'My grandfather Squeers,' said The Raggedy Man,
As he solemnly lighted his pipe and began-


'The most indestructible man, for his years,
And the grandest on earth, was my grandfather Squeers!


'He said, when he rounded his three-score-and-ten,
'I've the hang of it now and can do it again!'


'He had frozen his heels so repeatedly, he
Could tell by them just what the weather would be;


'And would laugh and declare, 'while the _Almanac_ would
Most falsely prognosticate, _he_ never could!'


'Such a hale constitution had grandfather Squeers
That, 'though he'd used '_navy_' for sixty odd years,


'He still chewed a dime's-worth six days of the week,
While the seventh he passed with a chew in each cheek:


'Then my grandfather Squeers had a singular knack
Of sitting around on the small of his back,


'With his legs like a letter Y stretched o'er the grate
Wherein 'twas his custom to ex-pec-tor-ate.


'He was fond of tobacco in _manifold_ ways,
And would sit on the door-step, of sunshiny days,


'And smoke leaf-tobacco he'd raised strictly for
The pipe he'd used all through The Mexican War.'


And The Raggedy Man said, refilling the bowl
Of his own pipe and leisurely picking a coal


From the stove with his finger and thumb, 'You can see
What a tee-nacious habit he's fastened on me!


'And my grandfather Squeers took a special delight
In pruning his corns every Saturday night


'With a horn-handled razor, whose edge he excused
By saying 'twas one that his grandfather used;


'And, though deeply etched in the haft of the same
Was the ever-euphonious Wostenholm's name,


''Twas my grandfather's custom to boast of the blade
As 'A Seth Thomas razor--the best ever made!'


'No Old Settlers' Meeting, or Pioneers' Fair,



Was complete without grandfather Squeers in the chair

'To lead off the programme by telling folks how
'He used to shoot deer where the Court-House stands now'-


'How 'he felt, of a truth, to live over the past,
When the country was wild and unbroken and vast,

''That the little log cabin was just plenty fine
For himself, his companion, and fambly of nine!-


''When they didn't have even a pump, or a tin,
But drunk surface-water, year out and year in,

''From the old-fashioned gourd that was sweeter, by odds,
Than the goblets of gold at the lips of the gods!''

Then The Raggedy Man paused to plaintively say
It was clockin' along to'rds the close of the day--

And he'd _ought_ to get back to his work on the lawn,--
Then dreamily blubbered his pipe and went on:

'His teeth were imperfect--my grandfather owned
That he couldn't eat oysters unless they were 'boned';

'And his eyes were so weak, and so feeble of sight,
He couldn't sleep with them unless, every night,

'He put on his spectacles--all he possessed,--
Three pairs--with his goggles on top of the rest.

'And my grandfather always, retiring at night,
Blew down the lamp-chimney to put out the light;

'Then he'd curl up on edge like a shaving, in bed,
And puff and smoke pipes in his sleep, it is said:

'And would snore oftentimes as the legends relate,
Till his folks were wrought up to a terrible state,-


'Then he'd snort, and rear up, and roll over; and there,
In the subsequent hush they could hear him chew air.

'And so glaringly bald was the top of his head
That many's the time he has musingly said,

'As his eyes journeyed o'er its reflex in the glass,-'
I must set out a few signs of _Keep Off the Grass!_'

'So remarkably deaf was my grandfather Squeers
That he had to wear lightning-rods over his ears


'To even hear thunder--and oftentimes then
He was forced to request it to thunder again.'

George Mullen's Confession

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
The last five years and better. It ain't worth while to talk-


I've been too mean to tell it! I've been so hard, you see,
And full of pride, and--onry--now there's the word for me--
Just onry--and to show you, I'll give my history
With vital points in question, and I think you'll all agree.


I was always stiff and stubborn since I could recollect,
And had an awful temper, and never would reflect;
And always into trouble--I remember once at school
The teacher tried to flog me, and I reversed that rule.


O I was bad I tell you! And it's a funny move
That a fellow wild as I was could ever fall in love;
And it's a funny notion that an animal like me,
Under a girl's weak fingers was as tame as tame could be!


But it's so, and sets me thinking of the easy way she had
Of cooling down my temper--though I'd be fighting mad.
'My Lion Queen' I called her--when a spell of mine occurred
She'd come in a den of feelings and quell them with a word.


I'll tell you how she loved me--and what her people thought:
When I asked to marry Annie they said 'they reckoned not--
That I cut too many didoes and monkey-shines to suit
Their idea of a son-in-law, and I could go, to boot!'


I tell you that thing riled me! Why, I felt my face turn white,
And my teeth shut like a steel trap, and the fingers of my right
Hand pained me with their pressure--all the rest's a mystery
Till I heard my Annie saying--'I'm going, too, you see.'


We were coming through the gateway, and she wavered for a spell
When she heard her mother crying and her raving father yell
That she wa'n't no child of his'n--like an actor in a play
We saw at Independence, coming through the other day.


Well! that's the way we started. And for days and weeks and
months
And even years we journeyed on, regretting never once
Of starting out together upon the path of life--
Akind o' sort o' husband, but a mighty loving wife,--


And the cutest little baby--little Grace--I see her now
A-standin' on the pig-pen as her mother milked the cow--
And I can hear her shouting--as I stood unloading straw,-'
I'm ain't as big as papa, but I'm biggerest'n ma.'



Now folks that never married don't seem to understand
That a little baby's language is the sweetest ever planned--
Why, I tell you it's pure music, and I'll just go on to say
That I sometimes have a notion that the angels talk that way!


There's a chapter in this story I'd be happy to destroy;
I could burn it up before you with a mighty sight of joy;
But I'll go ahead and give it--not in detail, no, my friend,
For it takes five years of reading before you find the end.


My Annie's folks relented--at least, in some degree;
They sent one time for Annie, but they didn't send for me.
The old man wrote the message with a heart as hot and dry
As a furnace--'Annie Mullen, come and see your mother die.'


I saw the slur intended--why I fancied I could see
The old man shoot the insult like a poison dart at me;
And in that heat of passion I swore an inward oath
That if Annie pleased her father she could never please us both.


I watched her--dark and sullen--as she hurried on her shawl;
I watched her--calm and cruel, though I saw her tear-drops fall;
I watched her--cold and heartless, though I heard her moaning,
call
For mercy from high Heaven--and I smiled throughout it all.


Why even when she kissed me, and her tears were on my brow,
As she murmured, 'George, forgive me--I must go to mother now!'
Such hate there was within me that I answered not at all,
But calm, and cold and cruel, I smiled throughout it all.


But a shadow in the doorway caught my eye, and then the face
Full of innocence and sunshine of little baby Grace.
And I snatched her up and kissed her, and I softened through and
through
For a minute when she told me 'I must kiss her muvver too.'


I remember, at the starting, how I tried to freeze again
As I watched them slowly driving down the little crooked lane--
When Annie shouted something that ended in a cry,
And how I tried to whistle and it fizzled in a sigh.


I remember running after, with a glimmer in my sight--
Pretending I'd discovered that the traces wasn't right;
And the last that I remember, as they disappeared from view,
Was little Grace a-calling, 'I see papa! Howdy-do!'


And left alone to ponder, I again took up my hate
For the old man who would chuckle that I was desolate;
And I mouthed my wrongs in mutters till my pride called up the
pain
His last insult had given me--until I smiled again



Till the wild beast in my nature was raging in the den--
With no one now to quell it, and I wrote a letter then
Full of hissing things, and heated with so hot a heat of hate
That my pen flashed out black lightning at a most terrific rate.


I wrote that 'she had wronged me when she went away from me--
Though to see her dying mother 'twas her father's victory,
And a woman that could waver when her husband's pride was rent
Was no longer worthy of it.' And I shut the house and went.


To tell of my long exile would be of little good--
Though I couldn't half-way tell it, and I wouldn't if I could!
I could tell of California--of a wild and vicious life;
Of trackless plains, and mountains, and the Indian's
scalping-knife.


I could tell of gloomy forests howling wild with threats of
death;
I could tell of fiery deserts that have scorched me with their
breath;
I could tell of wretched outcasts by the hundreds, great and
small,
And could claim the nasty honor of the greatest of them all.


I could tell of toil and hardship; and of sickness and disease,
And hollow-eyed starvation, but I tell you, friend, that these
Are trifles in comparison with what a fellow feels
With that bloodhound, Remorsefulness, forever at his heels.


I remember--worn and weary of the long, long years of care,
When the frost of time was making early harvest of my hair--
I remember, wrecked and hopeless of a rest beneath the sky,
My resolve to quit the country, and to seek the East, and die.


I remember my long journey, like a dull, oppressive dream,
Across the empty prairies till I caught the distant gleam
Of a city in the beauty of its broad and shining stream
On whose bosom, flocked together, float the mighty swans of
steam.


I remember drifting with them till I found myself again
In the rush and roar and rattle of the engine and the train;
And when from my surroundings something spoke of child and wife,
It seemed the train was rumbling through a tunnel in my life.


Then I remember something--like a sudden burst of light--
That don't exactly tell it, but I couldn't tell it right--
A something clinging to me with its arms around my neck--
A little girl, for instance--or an angel, I expect--


For she kissed me, cried and called me 'her dear papa,' and I



felt
My heart was pure virgin gold, and just about to melt--
And so it did--it melted in a mist of gleaming rain
When she took my hand and whispered, 'My mama's on the train.'


There's some things I can dwell on, and get off pretty well,
But the balance of this story I know I couldn't tell;
So I ain't going to try it, for to tell the reason why-I'm
so chicken-hearted lately I'd be certain 'most to cry.

Fool-Youngens


Me an' Bert an' Minnie-Belle
Knows a joke, an' we won't tell!
No, we don't--'cause we don't know
_Why_ we got to laughin' so;
But we got to laughin' so,
'We ist kep' a-laughin'.


Wind wuz blowin' in the tree--
An' wuz only ist us three
Playin' there; an' ever' one
Ketched each other, like we done,
Squintin' up there at the sun
Like we wuz a-laughin'.


Nothin' funny anyway;
But I laughed, an' so did they--
An' we all three laughed, an' nen
Squint' our eyes an' laugh' again:
Ner we didn't ist _p'ten'_--
We wuz _shore-'nough_ laughin'.


'We ist laugh' an' laugh', tel Bert
Say he _can't_ quit an' it hurt.
Nen I _howl_, an' Minnie-Belle
She tear up the grass a spell
An' ist stop her yeers an' _yell_
Like she'd _die_ a-laughin'.


Never sich fool-youngens yit!
Nothin' funny,--not a bit!--
But we laugh' so; tel we whoop'
Purt'-nigh like we have the croup--
All so hoarse we'd wheeze an' whoop
An' ist _choke_ a-laughin'.

Friday Afternoon

To William Morris Pierson
[1868-1870]


Of the wealth of facts and fancies
That our memories may recall,
The old school-day romances
Are the dearest, after all!--.
When some sweet thought revises
The half-forgotten tune
That opened 'Exercises'
On 'Friday Afternoon.'


We seem to hear the clicking
Of the pencil and the pen,
And the solemn, ceaseless ticking
Of the timepiece ticking then;
And we note the watchful master,
As he waves the warning rod,
With our own heart beating faster
Than the boy's who threw the wad.


Some little hand uplifted,
And the creaking of a shoe:--
A problem left unsifted
For the teacher's hand to do:
The murmured hum of learning--
And the flutter of a book;
The smell of something burning,
And the school's inquiring look.


The bashful boy in blushes;
And the girl, with glancing eyes,
Who hides her smiles, and hushes
The laugh about to rise,--
Then, with a quick invention,
Assumes a serious face,
To meet the words, 'Attention!
Every scholar in his place!'


The opening song, page 20.--
Ah! dear old 'Golden Wreath,'
You willed your sweets in plenty;
And some who look beneath
The leaves of Time will linger,
And loving tears will start,
As Fancy trails her finger
O'er the index of the heart.


'Good News from Home'--We hear it
Welling tremulous, yet clear
And holy as the spirit
Of the song we used to hear-



'Good news for me' (A throbbing
And an aching melody)-'
Has come across the'--(sobbing,
Yea, and salty) 'dark blue sea!'


Or the paean 'Scotland's burning!'
With its mighty surge and swell
Of chorus, still returning
To its universal yell--
Till we're almost glad to drop to
Something sad and full of pain--
And 'Skip verse three,' and stop, too,
Ere our hearts are broke again.


Then 'the big girls'' compositions,
With their doubt, and hope, and glow
Of heart and face,--conditions
Of 'the big boys'--even so,--
When themes of 'Spring,' and 'Summer'
And of 'Fall,' and 'Winter-time'
Droop our heads and hold us dumber
Than the sleigh-bell's fancied chime.


Elocutionary science-(
Still in changeless infancy!)--
With its 'Cataline's Defiance,'
And 'The Banner of the Free':
Or, lured from Grandma's attic,
A ramshackle 'rocker' there,
Adds a skreek of the dramatic
To the poet's 'Old Arm-Chair.'


Or the 'Speech of Logan' shifts us
From the pathos, to the fire;
And Tell (with Gessler) lifts us
Many noble notches higher.--
Till a youngster, far from sunny,
With sad eyes of watery blue,
Winds up with something 'funny,'
Like 'Cock-a-doodle-do!'


Then a dialogue--selected
For its realistic worth:--
The Cruel Boy detected
With a turtle turned to earth
Back downward; and, in pleading,
The Good Boy--strangely gay
At such a sad proceeding--
Says, 'Turn him over, pray!'


So the exercises taper
Through gradations of delight



To the reading of 'The Paper,'
Which is entertaining--quite!
For it goes ahead and mentions
'If a certain Mr. O.
Has serious intentions
That he ought to tell her so.'


It also 'Asks permission
To intimate to 'John'
The dubious condition
Of the ground he's standing on';
And, dropping the suggestion
To 'mind what he's about,'
It stuns him with the question:
'Does his mother know he's out?'


And among the contributions
To this 'Academic Press'
Are 'Versified Effusions'
By--'Our lady editress'--
Which fact is proudly stated
By the CHIEF of the concern,-'
Though the verse communicated
Bears the pen-name 'Fanny Fern.' '


. . . . . .
When all has been recited,
And the teacher's bell is heard,
And visitors, invited,
Have dropped a kindly word,
A hush of holy feeling
Falls down upon us there,
As though the day were kneeling,
With the twilight for the prayer.


. . . . . .
Midst the wealth of facts and fancies
That our memories may recall,
Thus the old school-day romances
Are the dearest, after all!--
When some sweet thought revises
The half-forgotten tune
That opened 'Exercises,'
On 'Friday Afternoon.'