Riley Love-Lyrics | Page 9

dinna find ye there!
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HOME AT NIGHT
When chirping crickets fainter cry,?And pale stars blossom in the sky,?And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom?And blurred the butterfly:
When locust-blossoms fleck the walk,?And up the tiger-lily stalk?The glow-worm crawls and clings and falls?And glimmers down the garden-walls:
When buzzing things, with double wings?Of crisp and raspish flutterings,?Go whizzing by so very nigh?One thinks of fangs and stings:--
O then, within, is stilled the din?Of crib she rocks the baby in,?And heart and gate and latch's weight?Are lifted--- and the lips of Kate,
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WHEN LIDE MARRIED _HIM_
When Lide married _him_--w'y, she had to jes dee-fy?The whole poppilation!--But she never bat' an eye!?Her parents begged, and _threatened_--she must give him up--that _he_ Wuz jes "a common drunkard!"--And he _wuz_, appearantly.--
Swore they'd chase him off the place
Ef he ever showed his face--
Long after she'd _eloped_ with him and _married_ him fer shore!-- When Lide married _him_, it wuz _"Katy, bar the door!"_
When Lide married _him_--Well! she had to go and be?A _hired girl_ in town somewheres--while he tromped round to see What _he_ could git that _he_ could do,--you might say, jes sawed
wood From door to door!--that's what he done--'cause that wuz best he
could!
And the strangest thing, i jing!
Wuz, he didn't _drink_ a thing,--
But jes got down to bizness, like he someway _wanted_ to, When Lide married _him_, like they warned her _not_ to do!
When Lide married _him_--er, ruther, _had_ ben married?A little up'ards of a year--some feller come and carried That _hired girl_ away with him--a ruther _stylish_ feller In a bran-new green spring-wagon, with the wheels striped red and
yeller:
And he whispered, as they driv
Tords the country, _"Now we'll live!"_--
And _somepin' else_ she _laughed_ to hear, though both her eyes wuz
dim,
'Bout _"trustin' Love and Heav'n above_, sence Lide married _him!"_
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HER HAIR
The beauty of her hair bewilders me--?Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide?Swirling about the ears on either side?And storming around the neck tumultuously:?Or like the lights of old antiquity?Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide,?Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified?In chastest marble, nude of drapery.?And so I love it.--Either unconfined;?Or plaited in close braidings manifold;?Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined?In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled?At any lightest kiss; or by the wind?Whipped out in flossy ravelings of gold.
LAST NIGHT--AND THIS
Last night--how deep the darkness was!?And well I knew its depths, because?I waded it from shore to shore,?Thinking to reach the light no more.
She would not even touch my hand.--?The winds rose and the cedars fanned?The moon out, and the stars fled back?In heaven and hid--and all was black!
But ah! To-night a summons came,?Signed with a teardrop for a name,--?For as I wondering kissed it, lo,?A line beneath it told me so.
And _now_ the moon hangs over me?A disk of dazzling brilliancy,?And every star-tip stabs my sight?With splintered glitterings of light!
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A DISCOURAGING MODEL
Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,?With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,?Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,?And a knot of red roses sown in under there
Where the shadows are lost in her hair.
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Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground?Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;?And the gleam