Armazindy Page #5

James Whitcomb Riley poems book published in the 1894 book Armazindy and received very negative reviews that referred to poems like "The Little Dog-Woggy" and "Jargon-Jingle" as "drivel" and to Riley as a "worn out genius". Most of his growing number of critics suggested that he ignored the quality of the poems for the sake of making money.

• Poetry

								

  Were bowed to her.—But O my friends,
  My hopes went up—my heart went down—
  When Maimie married—Charley Brown!

“THIS DEAR CHILD-HEARTED WOMAN THAT IS DEAD”

I

  This woman, with the dear child-heart,
    Ye mourn as dead, is—where and what?
  With faith as artless as her Art,
                          I question not,—

  But dare divine, and feel, and know
    Her blessedness—as hath been writ
  In allegory.—Even so
                          I fashion it:—

II

  A stately figure, rapt and awed
    In her new guise of Angelhood,
  Still lingered, wistful—knowing God
                          Was very good.—

  Her thought’s fine whisper filled the pause;
    And, listening, the Master smiled,
  And lo! the stately angel was
                          —A little child.

TO A POET-CRITIC

  Yes,—the bee sings—I confess it—
  Sweet as honey—Heaven bless it!—
  Yit he’d be a sweeter singer
  Ef he didn’t have no stinger.

AN OLD-TIMER

  Here where the wayward stream
  Is restful as a dream,
    And where the banks o’erlook
  A pool from out whose deeps
  My pleased face upward peeps,
                I cast my hook.

  Silence and sunshine blent!—
  A Sabbath-like content
    Of wood and wave;—a free-
  Hand landscape grandly wrought
  Of Summer’s brightest thought
                And mastery.—

  For here form, light and shade,
  And color—all are laid
    With skill so rarely fine,
  The eye may even see
  The ripple tremblingly
                Lip at the line.

  I mark the dragon-fly
  Flit waveringly by
    In ever-veering flight,
  Till, in a hush profound,
  I see him eddy round
                The “cork,” and—’light!

  Ho! with the boy’s faith then
  Brimming my heart again,
    And knowing, soon or late,
  The “nibble” yet shall roll
  Its thrills along the pole,
                I—breathless—wait.

THE SILENT VICTORS

MAY 30, 1878

  “Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
  Thundered on his eager ear.”

  CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

  Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation’s heart
    Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,
  Who in grim Battle’s drama played their part,
    And slumber here to-day.—

  Warm hearts that beat their lives out at the shrine
    Of Freedom, while our country held its breath
  As brave battalions wheeled themselves in line
    And marched upon their death:

  When Freedom’s Flag, its natal wounds scarce healed,
    Was torn from peaceful winds and flung again
  To shudder in the storm of battle-field—
    The elements of men,—

  When every star that glittered was a mark
    For Treason’s ball, and every rippling bar
  Of red and white was sullied with the dark
    And purple stain of war:

  When angry guns, like famished beasts of prey,
    Were howling o’er their gory feast of lives,
  And sending dismal echoes far away
    To mothers, maids, and wives:—

  The mother, kneeling in the empty night,
    With pleading hands uplifted for the son
  Who, even as she prayed, had fought the fight—
    The victory had won:

  The wife, with trembling hand that wrote to say
    The babe was waiting for the sire’s caress—
  The letter meeting that upon the way,—
    The babe was fatherless:

  The maiden, with her lips, in fancy, pressed
    Against the brow once dewy with her breath,
  Now lying numb, unknown, and uncaressed
    Save by the dews of death.

II

  What meed of tribute can the poet pay
    The Soldier, but to trail the ivy-vine
  Of idle rhyme above his grave to-day
    In epitaph design?—

  Or wreathe with laurel-words the icy brows
    That ache no longer with a dream of fame,
  But, pillowed lowly in the narrow house,
    Renown’d beyond the name.

  The dewy tear-drops of the night may fall,
    And tender morning with her shining hand
  May brush them from the grasses green and tall
    That undulate the land.—

  Yet song of Peace nor din of toil and thrift,
    Nor chanted honors, with the flowers we heap,
  Can yield us hope the Hero’s head to lift
    Out of its dreamless sleep:

  The dear old flag, whose faintest flutter flies
    A stirring echo through each patriot breast,
  Can never coax to life the folded eyes
    That saw its wrongs redressed—

  That watched it waver when the fight was hot,
    And blazed with newer courage to its aid,
  Regardless of the shower of shell and shot
    Through which the charge was made;—

  And when, at last, they saw it plume its wings,
    Like some proud bird in stormy element,
  And soar untrammelled on its wanderings,
    They closed in death, content.

III

  O mother, you who miss the smiling face
    Of that dear boy who vanished from your sight,
  And left you weeping o’er the vacant place
    He used to fill at night,—

  Who left you dazed, bewildered, on a day
    That echoed wild huzzas, and roar of guns
  That drowned the farewell words you tried to say
    To incoherent ones;—

  Be glad and proud you had the life to give—
    Be comforted through all the years to come,—
  Your country has a longer life to live,
    Your son a better home.

  O widow, weeping o’er the orphaned child,
    Who only lifts his questioning eyes to send
  A keener pang to grief unreconciled,—
    Teach him to comprehend

  He had a father brave enough to stand
    Before the fire of Treason’s blazing gun,
  That, dying, he might will the rich old land
    Of Freedom to his son.

  And, maiden, living on through lonely years
    In fealty to love’s enduring ties,—
  With strong faith gleaming through the tender tears
    That gather in your eyes,

  Look up! and own, in gratefulness of prayer,
    Submission to the will of Heaven’s High Host:—
  I see your Angel-soldier pacing there,
    Expectant at his post.—

  I see the rank and file of armies vast,
    That muster under one supreme control;
  I hear the trumpet sound the signal-blast—
    The calling of the roll—

  The grand divisions falling into line
    And forming, under voice of One alone,
  Who gives command, and joins with tongue divine
    The hymn that shakes the Throne.

IV

  And thus, in tribute to the forms that rest
    In their last camping-ground, we strew the bloom
  And fragrance of the flowers they loved the best,
    In silence o’er the tomb.

  With reverent hands we twine the Hero’s wreath
    And clasp it tenderly on stake or stone
  That stands the sentinel for each beneath
    Whose glory is our own.

  While in the violet that greets the sun,
    We see the azure eye of some lost boy;
  And in the rose the ruddy cheek of one
    We kissed in childish joy,—

  Recalling, haply, when he marched away,
    He laughed his loudest though his eyes were wet.—
  The kiss he gave his mother’s brow that day
    Is there and burning yet:

  And through the storm of grief around her tossed,
    One ray of saddest comfort she may see,—
  Four hundred thousand sons like hers were lost
    To weeping Liberty.

  ...

  But draw aside the drapery of gloom,
    And let the sunshine chase the clouds away
  And gild with brighter glory every tomb
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