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Home  »  Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical  »  James Whitcomb Riley

C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

James Whitcomb Riley

  • An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,
  • We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
  • A-list’nin’ to the witch tales ’at Annie tells about,
  • An’ the gobble-uns ’at gits you
  • Ef you
  • Don’t
  • Watch
  • Out!
  • And the South Wind—he was dressed
  • With a ribbon round his breast
  • That floated, flapped, and fluttered
  • In it riotous unrest
  • And a drapery of mist
  • From the shoulder to the wrist
  • Floating backward with the motion
  • Of the waving hand he kissed.
  • And the sun had on a crown
  • Wrought of gilded thistledown,
  • And a scarf of velvet vapor
  • And a raveled rainbow gown;
  • And his tinsel-tangled hair
  • Tossed and lost upon the air
  • Was glossier and flossier
  • Than any anywhere.
  • Just the wee cot—the cricket’s chirr—
  • Love and the smiling face of her.
  • One naked star has waded through
  • The purple shallows of the night,
  • And faltering as falls the dew
  • It drips its misty light.
  • The ripest peach is highest on the tree.