James Whitcomb Riley
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw American poetry engage with regional vernacular traditions and the textures of ordinary life, as writers working in English sought voices distinct from the formally elevated verse of earlier decades. James Whitcomb Riley was born on October 7, 1849, in Greenfield, and he worked throughout his life as a writer and poet, composing in the English language as a citizen of the United States.
Riley's body of work included "The American Flag" and "A Tinkle of Bells and Other Poems," titles that suggest a range of poetic concerns moving between patriotic subjects and the lyrical and domestic. As both a writer and a poet, he contributed to the English-language literary output of his era across multiple forms and registers. He died on July 22, 1916, in Indianapolis.
Riley's place in the documented literary record is confirmed by his inclusion in the Library of Congress Name Authority File, which carries the authorized entry "Riley, James Whitcomb, 1849–1916." That formal cataloguing situates him as a recognized figure within the institutional record of American letters, and it remains the clearest marker of his standing in the archival history of English-language poetry from his period.
Quotes by James Whitcomb Riley
The Beautiful City! Forever / Its rapturous praises resound; / We fain would behold it — but never / A glimpse of its dory is found:
Over all the waking earth / The tears of night are brushed away / And eyes are lit with love and mirth / And benisons of richest worthGo up to bless the new-born day.
Spangled with the shine and shade / I see the rivers raveled out / In strands of silver, slowly fade / In threads of light along the glade.
The master-hand whose pencils trace / This wondrous landscape of the morn / Is but the sun, whose glowing face.
But, Blossoms On The Trees, / With your breath upon the breeze / There's nothing all the world around / As half as sweet as you!
His face with freckles,--and his ears, how quick And curious and intrusive!--And how pale The blue of his big eyes;--and how a tale Of Giants, Trolls or Fairies, bulged them still
The ripest peach is highest on the tree -- / And so her love, beyond the reach of me, / Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow / Her heart down to me where I worship now!
My good night, his cheeks' all wet An' taste salty.--An' he held Wite close to me an' rocked some
Sing! peacock on the orchard wall, Or tree-toad by the trickling spring! Sing! every bird on every bough--
We must get home — for we have been away / So long it seems forever and a day! / And O so very homesick we have grown, / The laughter of the world is like a moan / In our tired hearing, and its songs as vain, — / We must get home — we must get home again!