Riley Child-Rhymes | Page 7

"Look here, my lad,?Here's my pack,--jes' he'p yourse'f, like all good boys does!" Long afore
I knowed who
"Santy-Claus" wuz!


[Illustration: An' quar'l with his frosted heels]
Wisht that yarn was true about him, as it 'peared to be--?Truth made out o' lies like that-un's good enough fer me!-- Wisht I still wuz so confidin' I could jes' go wild?Over hangin' up my stockin's, like the little child?Climbin' in my lap to-night, an' beggin' me to tell?'Bout them reindeers, and "Old Santy" that she loves so well I'm half sorry fer this little-girl-sweetheart of his--?Long afore
She knows who
"Santy-Claus" is!


[Illustration: Who Santy-Claus Wuz--Tailpiece]
THE NINE LITTLE GOBLINS
They all climbed up on a high board-fence--?Nine little Goblins, with green-glass eyes--?Nine little Goblins that had no sense,?And couldn't tell coppers from cold mince pies;?And they all climbed up on the fence, and sat--?And I asked them what they were staring at.
And the first one said, as he scratched his head?With a queer little arm that reached out of his ear?And rasped its claws in his hair so red--?"This is what this little arm is fer!"?And he scratched and stared, and the next one said,?"How on earth do you scratch your head?"
And he laughed like the screech of a rusty hinge--?Laughed and laughed till his face grew black;?And when he choked, with a final twinge?Of his stifling laughter, he thumped his back?With a fist that grew on the end of his tail?Till the breath came back to his lips so pale.
[Illustration: The Nine Little Goblins]
And the third little Goblin leered round at me--?And there were no lids on his eyes at all--?And he clucked one eye, and he says, says he,?"What is the style of your socks this fall?"?And he clapped his heels--and I sighed to see?That he had hands where his feet should be.
Then a bald-faced Goblin, gray and grim,?Bowed his head, and I saw him slip?His eyebrows off, as I looked at him,?And paste them over his upper lip;?And then he moaned in remorseful pain--?"Would--Ah, would I'd me brows again!"
And then the whole of the Goblin band?Rocked on the fence-top to and fro,?And clung, in a long row, hand in hand,?Singing the songs that 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