Transcriber's Note: Dialect has been retained as it appears in the original publication.
THE
OLD SOLDIER'S STORY
Poems and Prose Sketches
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Indianapolis
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1913, 1914, 1915
James Whitcomb Riley
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
TO
GEORGE THOMPSON, ESQ.
"Apples ben ripe in my gardayne"
CONTENTS
PAGE The Old Soldier's Story 1 Somep'n Common-like 5 Monsieur le Secretaire 6 A Phantom 7 In the Corridor 8 Louella Wainie 9 The Text 11 William Brown 12 Why 14 The Touch of Loving Hands 15 A Test 16 A Song for Christmas 17 Sun and Rain 19 With Her Face 20 My Night 21 The Hour Before the Dawn 22 Good-by, Old Year 23 False and True 24 A Ballad from April 25 Brudder Sims 27 Deformed 28 Faith 30 The Lost Thrill 31 At Dusk 32 Another Ride from Ghent to Aix 33 In the Heart of June 36 Dreams 37 Because 42 To the CricketTHE OLD SOLDIER'S STORY
AS TOLD BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN NEW YORK CITY
Since we have had no stories to-night I will venture, Mr. President, to tell a story that I have heretofore heard at nearly all the banquets I have ever attended. It is a story simply, and you must bear with it kindly. It is a story as told by a friend of us all, who is found in all parts of all countries, who is immoderately fond of a funny story, and who, unfortunately, attempts to tell a funny story himself—one that he has been particularly delighted with. Well, he is not a story-teller, and especially he is not a funny story-teller. His funny stories, indeed, are oftentimes touchingly pathetic. But to such a story as he tells, being a good-natured man and kindly disposed, we have to listen, because we do not want to wound his feelings by telling him that we have heard that story a great number of times, and that we have heard it ably told by a great number of people from the time we were children. But, as I say, we can not hurt his feelings. We can not stop him. We can not kill him; and so the story generally proceeds. He selects a very old story always, and generally tells it in about this fashion:—
I heerd an awful funny thing the other day—ha! ha! I don't know whether I kin git it off er not, but, anyhow, I'll tell it to you. Well!—le's see now how the fool-thing goes. Oh, yes!—W'y, there was a feller one time—it was durin' the army, and this feller that I started in to tell you about was in the war, and—ha! ha!—there was a big fight a-goin' on, and this feller was in the fight, and it was a big battle and bullets a-flyin' ever' which way, and bombshells a-bu'stin', and cannon-balls a-flyin' 'round promiskus; and this feller right in the midst of it, you know, and all excited and het up, and chargin' away; and the fust thing you know along come a cannon-ball and shot his head off—ha! ha! ha! Hold on here a minute!—no sir; I'm a-gittin' ahead of my story; no, no; it didn't shoot his head off—I'm gittin' the cart before the horse there—shot his leg off; that was the way; shot his leg off; and down the poor feller drapped, and, of course, in that condition was perfectly he'pless, you know, but yit with presence o' mind enough to know that he was in a dangerous condition ef somepin' wasn't done fer him right away. So he seen a comrade a-chargin' by that he knowed, and he hollers to him and called him by name—I disremember now what the feller's name was....
Well, that's got nothin' to do with the story, anyway; he hollers to him, he did, and says, "Hello, there," he says to him; "here, I want you to come here and give me a lift; I got my leg shot off, and I want you to pack me back to the rear of the battle"—where the doctors always is, you know, during a fight—and he says, "I want you to pack me back there where I can get med-dy-cinal attention er I'm a dead man, fer I got my leg shot off," he says, "and I want you to pack me back there so's the surgeons kin take keer of me." Well—the feller, as luck would have it, ricko-nized him and run to him
SOMEP'N COMMON-LIKE
And plain, and easy understood;
Somep'n 'at folks like me and you
Kin understand, and relish, too,
And find some sermint in 'at hits
The spot, and sticks and benefits.
'Cause, take the run o' minds like mine,
And we'll go more on good horse-sense
Than all your flowery eloquence;
And we'll jedge best of honest acts
By Nature's statement of the facts.
Your misery, er happiness,
Er anything 'at's wuth the time
O' telling in plain talk er rhyme—
Jes' sort o' let your subject run
As ef the Lord wuz listenun.
MONSIEUR LE SECRETAIRE
[JOHN CLARK RIDPATH]
Your song flits with me everywhere;
It lights on Fancy's prow and sings
Me on divinest voyagings:
And when my ruler love would fain
Be laid upon it—high again
It mounts, and hugs itself from me
With rapturous wings—still dwindlingly—
On!—on! till but a ghost is there
Of song, Monsieur le Secretaire!
A PHANTOM
And your fairy face comes back to me to-day,
But I can not feel the strands
Of your tresses, nor the play
Of the dainty velvet-touches of your hands.
Now your arms cling not about me as of old—
O my dream of rest come true,
And my richer wealth than gold,
And the surest hope of Heaven that I knew!
Of merriment once mingled with my own—
For the laughter of your lips,
And the kisses plucked and thrown
In the lavish wastings of your finger-tips!
And be again just as you used to be,
For this phantom of you stands
All too cold and silently,
And will not kiss nor touch me with its hands.
IN THE CORRIDOR
Now the band may play
Till its sweetest tone, love,
Swoons and dies away!
They who most will miss us
We're not caring for—
Who of them could kiss us
In the corridor?
Ere this long delay,
Just how all alone, dear,
We might waltz away,
Then for hours, like this, love,
We are longing for,
We'd have still to kiss, love,
In the corridor!
Hug and hold me close—
Time will come to part, love,
Ere a fellow knows;
There! the Strauss is ended—
Whirl across the floor:
Isn't waltzing splendid
In the corridor?
LOUELLA WAINIE
Do you not hear me as I cry?
Dusk is falling; I feel the dew;
And the dark will be here by and by:
I hear no thing but the owl's hoo-hoo!
Louella Wainie! where
We came loitering, Lou and I,
Long ere the fireflies coaxed the stars
Out of their hiding-place on high.
O how sadly the cattle moo!
Louella Wainie! where are you?
"I will go this way," said she,
"And you will go that way, my dear"—
Kissing her dainty hand at me—
And the hazels hid her from my view.
Louella Wainie! where are you?
Than to stand on the farther brink
Of twilight, hearing the marsh-frogs sing?
Nothing could sadder be, I think!
And ah! how the night-fog chills one through.
Louella Wainie! where are you?
Lazy bubbles that bulge and stare
Up at the moon through the gloom it weaves
Out of the willows waving there!
Is it despair I am wading through?
Louella Wainie! where are you?
Listen, and send me some reply,
For so will I call unceasingly
Till death shall answer me by and by—
Answer, and help me to find you too!
Louella Wainie! where are you?
THE TEXT
He may have sinned;—One proof indeed,
He is thy fellow, reach thy hand
And help him in his need!
Have wronged thee—then, the less excuse
Thou hast for wronging him. Obey
What he has dared refuse!
His life a light or heavy load,
No less he needs the love of thee
To help him on his road.
WILLIAM BROWN
His name, at least, did not go down
With him that day
He went the way
Of certain death where duty lay.
He saw his watery resting-place
Undaunted, and
With firmer hand
Held others' hopes in sure command.—
Aye, babes unborn, and promised wives!
"The odds are dread,"
He must have said,
"Here, God, is one poor life instead."
No time for tears, or woman's touch
Of tenderness,
Or child's caress—
His last "God bless them!" stopped at "bless"—
Clasped iron hands for woe or weal,
And so went down
Where dark waves drown
All but the name of William Brown.
WHY
I catch faint perfumes of the blossoms white
That maidens drape their tresses with at night,
And, through dim smiles of beauty and the din
Of the musicians' harp and violin,
I hear, enwound and blended with the dance,
The voice whose echo is this utterance,—
Why are they written—all these lovers' rhymes?
I see but vacant windows, curtained o'er
With webs whose architects forevermore
Race up and down their slender threads to bind
The buzzing fly's wings whirless, and to wind
The living victim in his winding sheet.—
I shudder, and with whispering lips repeat,
Why are they written—all these lovers' rhymes?
What will you have for answer?—Shall I say
That he who sings the merriest roundelay
Hath neither joy nor hope?—and he who sings
The lightest, sweetest, tenderest of things
But utters moan on moan of keenest pain,
So aches his heart to ask and ask in vain,
Why are they written—all these lovers' rhymes?