Songs of Friendship

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Title: Songs of Friendship
Author: James Whitcomb Riley
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [eBook #23111]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS
OF FRIENDSHIP***
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RILEY SONGS OF FRIENDSHIP
by
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

With Pictures by Will Vawter
[Frontispiece: "Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!"]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright 1885, 1887, 1888, 1890,
1892, 1893, 1894, 1900, 1903,
1908,
1913, 1915
James Whitcomb Riley
To
Young E. Allison--Bookman
The bookman he's a humming-bird--
His feasts are honey-fine,--

(With hi! hilloo!
And clover-dew
And roses lush and rare!)
_His_
roses are the phrase and word
Of olden tomes divine;
(With hi! and
ho!
And pinks ablow
And posies everywhere!)
The Bookman he's
a humming-bird,--
He steals from song to song--
He scents the
ripest-blooming rhyme,
And takes his heart along
And sacks all
sweets of bursting verse
And ballads, throng on throng.
(With ho!
and hey!
And brook and brae,
And brinks of shade and shine!)
A humming-bird the Bookman is--
Though cumbrous, gray and
grim,--
(With hi! hilloo!
And honey-dew
And odors musty-rare!)

He bends him o'er that page of his
As o'er the rose's rim.
(With hi!
and ho!
And pinks aglow
And roses everywhere!)
Ay, he's the
featest humming-bird,
On airiest of wings
He poises pendent o'er
the poem
That blossoms as it sings--
God friend him as he dips his
beak
In such delicious things!
(With ho! and hey!
And world
away

And only dreams for him!)
O friends of mine, whose kindly words come to me
Voiced only in
lost lisps of ink and pen,
If I had power to tell the good you do me,

And how the blood you warm goes laughing through me,
My tongue
would babble baby-talk again.

And I would toddle round the world to meet you--
Fall at your feet,
and clamber to your knees
And with glad, happy hands would reach
and greet you,
And twine my arms about you, and entreat you
For
leave to weave a thousand rhymes like these--
A thousand rhymes enwrought of nought but presses
Of cherry-lip
and apple-cheek and chin,
And pats of honeyed palms, and rare
caresses,
And all the sweets of which as Fancy guesses
She folds
away her wings and swoons therein.
{xv}
CONTENTS
PAGE
ABE MARTIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 AMERICA'S
THANKSGIVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 ANCIENT
PRINTERMAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 ART AND
POETRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 BACK FROM
TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 BE OUR FORTUNES AS
THEY MAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
BECAUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 CHRISTMAS
GREETING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 DAN
O'SULLIVAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 DEAD JOKE AND
THE FUNNY MAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 DOWN TO THE
CAPITAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 FRIEND OF A WAYWARD
HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 GOOD-BY ER
HOWDY-DO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 HER
VALENTINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 HERR
WEISER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 HOBO VOLUNTARY,
A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 I SMOKE MY
PIPE .