Riley Child-Rhymes | Page 8

they used to know--
Singing the songs that their grandsires sung

In the goo-goo days of the Goblin-tongue.
And ever they kept their green-glass eyes
Fixed on me with a stony
stare--
Till my own grew glazed with a dread surmise,
And my hat
whooped up on my lifted hair,
And I felt the heart in my breast snap
to
As you've heard the lid of a snuff-box do.
And they sang "You're asleep! There is no board-fence,
And never a
Goblin with green-glass eyes!--
'Tis only a vision the mind invents

After a supper of cold mince-pies,--
And you're doomed to dream this
way," they said,--
"And you sha'n't wake up till you're clean plum
dead!"
[Illustration: The Nine Little Goblins--Tailpiece]
TIME OF CLEARER TWITTERINGS
[Illustration: Time of Clearer Twitterings--Title]
I.

Time of crisp and tawny leaves,
And of tarnished harvest sheaves,

And of dusty grasses--weeds--
Thistles, with their tufted seeds

Voyaging the Autumn breeze
Like as fairy argosies:
Time of
quicker flash of wings,
And of clearer twitterings
In the grove, or
deeper shade
Of the tangled everglade,--
Where the spotted
water-snake
Coils him in the sunniest brake;
And the bittern, as in
fright,
Darts, in sudden, slanting flight,
Southward, while the
startled crane
Films his eyes in dreams again.
II
Down along the dwindled creek
We go loitering. We speak
Only
with old questionings
Of the dear remembered things
Of the days of
long ago,
When the stream seemed thus and so
In our boyish
eyes:--The bank
Greener then, through rank on rank
Of the mottled
sycamores,
Touching tops across the shores:
Here, the hazel thicket
stood--
There, the almost pathless wood
Where the shellbark
hickory tree
Rained its wealth on you and me.
Autumn! as you
loved us then,
Take us to your heart again!
III
Season halest of the year!
How the zestful atmosphere
Nettles
blood and brain, and smites
Into life the old delights
We have tasted
in our youth,
And our graver years, forsooth!
How again the boyish
heart
Leaps to see the chipmunk start
From the brush and sleek the
sun
Very beauty, as he runs!

How again a subtle hint
Of crushed
pennyroyal or mint,
Sends us on our knees, as when
We were truant
boys of ten--
Brown marauders of the wood,
Merrier than Robin
Hood!
[Illustration: Where the shellbark hickory tree]
IV

Ah! will any minstrel say,
In his sweetest roundelay,
What is
sweeter, after all,
Than black haws, in early Fall--
Fruit so sweet the
frost first sat,
Dainty-toothed, and nibbled at!
And will any poet
sing
Of a lusher, richer thing
Than a ripe May-apple, rolled
Like a
pulpy lump of gold
Under thumb and finger-tips,
And poured
molten through the lips?
Go, ye bards of classic themes,
Pipe your
songs by classic streams!
I would twang the redbird's wings
In the
thicket while he sings!
THE CIRCUS-DAY PARADE
Oh, the Circus-Day parade! How the bugles played and played! And
how the glossy horses tossed their flossy manes, and neighed, As the
rattle and the rhyme of the tenor-drummer's time
Filled all the hungry
hearts of us with melody sublime!
How the grand band-wagon shone with a splendor all its own, And
glittered with a glory that our dreams had never known! And how the
boys behind, high and low of every kind,
Marched in unconscious
capture, with a rapture undefined!
How the horsemen, two and two, with their plumes of white and blue,
And crimson, gold and purple, nodding by at me and you.
Waved the
banners that they bore, as the Knights in days of yore, Till our glad
eyes gleamed and glistened like the spangles that they wore!
[Illustration: The Circus-Day Parade]
How the graceless-graceful stride of the elephant was eyed, And the
capers of the little horse that cantered at his side! How the shambling
camels, tame to the plaudits of their fame, With listless eyes came
silent, masticating as they came.
[Illustration: How the cages jolted past]
How the cages jolted past, with each wagon battened fast,
And the
mystery within it only hinted of at last
From the little grated square in

the rear, and nosing there The snout of some strange animal that sniffed
the outer air!
And, last of all, The Clown, making mirth for all the town, With his
lips curved ever upward and his eyebrows ever down, And his chief
attention paid to the little mule that played A tattoo on the dashboard
with his heels, in the parade.
Oh! the Circus-Day parade! How the bugles played and played! And
how the glossy horses tossed their flossy manes and neighed. As the
rattle and the rhyme of the tenor-drummer's time
Filled all the hungry
hearts of us with melody sublime!
[Illustration: And, last of all, the clown]
THE LUGUBRIOUS WHING-WHANG
[Illustration: The Lugubrious Whing-Whang--Title]
The rhyme o' The Raggedy Man's 'at's best
Is Tickle me, Love, in
these Lonesome Ribs,--
'Cause that-un's the strangest of all o' the rest,

An' the worst to learn, an' the last one guessed,
An' the funniest one,
an' the foolishest.--
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!
I don't know what in the world it means--
Tickle me, Love, in these
Lonesome Ribs!--
An' nen when I tell him I don't, he leans
Like he
was a-grindin' on some machines
An'