James Whitcomb Riley: Verses about Husband

'Write me a rhyme of the present time'.
And the poet took his pen
And wrote such lines as the miser minds
Hide in the hearts of men.

He grew enthused, as the poets used
When their fingers kissed the strings
Of some sweet lyre, and caught the fire
True inspiration brings,

And sang the song of a nation's wrong--
Of the patriot's galling chain,
And the glad release that the angel, Peace,
Has given him again.

He sang the lay of religion's sway,
Where a hundred creeds clasp hands
And shout in glee such a symphony
That the whole world understands.

He struck the key of monopoly,
And sang of her swift decay,
And traveled the track of the railway back
With a blithesome roundelay--

Of the tranquil bliss of a true love kiss;
And painted the picture, too,
Of the wedded life, and the patient wife,
And the husband fond and true;

And sang the joy that a noble boy
Brings to a father's soul,
Who lets the wine as a mocker shine
Stagnated in the bowl.

And he stabbed his pen in the ink again,
And wrote with a writhing frown,
'This is the end.' 'And now, my friend,
You may print it--upside down!'

No song is mine of Arab steed--
My courser is of nobler blood,
And cleaner limb and fleeter speed,
And greater strength and hardihood
Than ever cantered wild and free
Across the plains of Araby.

Go search the level desert land
From Sana on to Samarcand--
Wherever Persian prince has been,
Or Dervish, Sheik, or Bedouin,
And I defy you there to point
Me out a steed the half so fine--
From tip of ear to pastern-joint--
As this old iron horse of mine.

You do not know what beauty is--
You do not know what gentleness
His answer is to my caress!--
Why, look upon this gait of his,--
A touch upon his iron rein--
He moves with such a stately grace
The sunlight on his burnished mane
Is barely shaken in its place;
And at a touch he changes pace,
And, gliding backward, stops again.

And talk of mettle--Ah! my friend,
Such passion smolders in his breast
That when awakened it will send
A thrill of rapture wilder than
E'er palpitated heart of man
When flaming at its mightiest.
And there's a fierceness in his ire--
A maddened majesty that leaps
Along his veins in blood of fire,
Until the path his vision sweeps
Spins out behind him like a thread
Unraveled from the reel of time,
As, wheeling on his course sublime,
The earth revolves beneath his tread.

Then stretch away, my gallant steed!
Thy mission is a noble one:
Thou bear'st the father to the son,
And sweet relief to bitter need;
Thou bear'st the stranger to his friends;
Thou bear'st the pilgrim to the shrine,
And back again the prayer he sends
That God will prosper me and mine,--
The star that on thy forehead gleams
Has blossomed in our brightest dreams.

Then speed thee on thy glorious race!
The mother waits thy ringing pace;
The father leans an anxious ear
The thunder of thy hooves to hear;
The lover listens, far away,
To catch thy keen exultant neigh;
And, where thy breathings roll and rise,
The husband strains his eager eyes,
And laugh of wife and baby-glee
Ring out to greet and welcome thee.
Then stretch away! and when at last
The master's hand shall gently check
Thy mighty speed, and hold thee fast,
The world will pat thee on the neck.

Within the sitting-room, the company
Had been increased in number. Two or three
Young couples had been added: Emma King,
Ella and Mary Mathers--all could sing
Like veritable angels--Lydia Martin, too,
And Nelly Millikan.--What songs they knew!--

_''Ever of Thee--wherever I may be,
Fondly I'm drea-m-ing ever of thee!_''

And with their gracious voices blend the grace
Of Warsaw Barnett's tenor; and the bass
Unfathomed of Wick Chapman--Fancy still
Can _feel_, as well as _hear_ it, thrill on thrill,
Vibrating plainly down the backs of chairs
And through the wall and up the old hall-stairs.--
Indeed young Chapman's voice especially
Attracted _Mr. Hammond_--For, said he,
Waiving the most Elysian sweetness of
The _ladies_' voices--altitudes above
The _man's_ for sweetness;--_but_--as _contrast_, would
Not Mr. Chapman be so very good
As, just now, to oblige _all_ with--in fact,
Some sort of _jolly_ song,--to counteract
In part, at least, the sad, pathetic trend
Of music _generally_. Which wish our friend
'The Noted Traveler' made second to
With heartiness--and so each, in review,
Joined in--until the radiant _basso_ cleared
His wholly unobstructed throat and peered
Intently at the ceiling--voice and eye
As opposite indeed as earth and sky.--
Thus he uplifted his vast bass and let
It roam at large the memories booming yet:

''Old Simon the Cellarer keeps a rare store
Of Malmsey and Malvoi-sie,
Of Cyprus, and who can say how many more?--
But a chary old so-u-l is he-e-ee--
A chary old so-u-l is he!
Of hock and Canary he never doth fail;
And all the year 'round, there is brewing of ale;--
Yet he never aileth, he quaintly doth say,
While he keeps to his sober six flagons a day.''

... And then the chorus--the men's voices all
_Warred_ in it--like a German Carnival.--
Even _Mrs_. Hammond smiled, as in her youth,
Hearing her husband--And in veriest truth
'The Noted Traveler's' ever-present hat
Seemed just relaxed a little, after that,
As at conclusion of the Bacchic song
He stirred his 'float' vehemently and long.

Then Cousin Rufus with his flute, and art
Blown blithely through it from both soul and heart--
Inspired to heights of mastery by the glad,
Enthusiastic audience he had
In the young ladies of a town that knew
No other flutist,--nay, nor _wanted_ to,
Since they had heard _his_ 'Polly Hopkin's Waltz,'
Or 'Rickett's Hornpipe,' with its faultless faults,
As rendered solely, he explained, 'by ear,'
Having but heard it once, Commencement Year,
At 'Old Ann Arbor.'

Little Maymie now
Seemed 'friends' with _Mr. Hammond_--anyhow,
Was lifted to his lap--where settled, she--
Enthroned thus, in her dainty majesty,
Gained _universal_ audience--although
Addressing him alone:--'I'm come to show
You my new Red-blue pencil; and _she_ says'--
(Pointing to _Mrs._ Hammond)--'that she guess'
You'll make a _picture_ fer me.'

'And what _kind_
Of picture?' Mr. Hammond asked, inclined
To serve the child as bidden, folding square
The piece of paper she had brought him there.--
'I don't know,' Maymie said--'only ist make
A _little dirl_, like me!'

He paused to take
A sharp view of the child, and then he drew--
Awhile with red, and then awhile with blue--
The outline of a little girl that stood
In converse with a wolf in a great wood;
And she had on a hood and cloak of red--
As Maymie watched--'_Red Riding Hood!_' she said.
'And who's '_Red Riding Hood'?_'

'W'y, don't _you_ know?'
Asked little Maymie--

But the man looked so
All uninformed, that little Maymie could
But tell him _all about_ Red Riding Hood.

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
The last five years and better. It ain't worth while to talk--

I've been too mean to tell it! I've been so hard, you see,
And full of pride, and--onry--now there's the word for me--
Just onry--and to show you, I'll give my history
With vital points in question, and I think you'll all agree.

I was always stiff and stubborn since I could recollect,
And had an awful temper, and never would reflect;
And always into trouble--I remember once at school
The teacher tried to flog me, and I reversed that rule.

O I was bad I tell you! And it's a funny move
That a fellow wild as I was could ever fall in love;
And it's a funny notion that an animal like me,
Under a girl's weak fingers was as tame as tame could be!

But it's so, and sets me thinking of the easy way she had
Of cooling down my temper--though I'd be fighting mad.
'My Lion Queen' I called her--when a spell of mine occurred
She'd come in a den of feelings and quell them with a word.

I'll tell you how she loved me--and what her people thought:
When I asked to marry Annie they said 'they reckoned not--
That I cut too many didoes and monkey-shines to suit
Their idea of a son-in-law, and I could go, to boot!'

I tell you that thing riled me! Why, I felt my face turn white,
And my teeth shut like a steel trap, and the fingers of my right
Hand pained me with their pressure--all the rest's a mystery
Till I heard my Annie saying--'I'm going, too, you see.'

We were coming through the gateway, and she wavered for a spell
When she heard her mother crying and her raving father yell
That she wa'n't no child of his'n--like an actor in a play
We saw at Independence, coming through the other day.

Well! that's the way we started. And for days and weeks and
months
And even years we journeyed on, regretting never once
Of starting out together upon the path of life--
Akind o' sort o' husband, but a mighty loving wife,--

And the cutest little baby--little Grace--I see her now
A-standin' on the pig-pen as her mother milked the cow--
And I can hear her shouting--as I stood unloading straw,--
'I'm ain't as big as papa, but I'm biggerest'n ma.'

Now folks that never married don't seem to understand
That a little baby's language is the sweetest ever planned--
Why, I tell you it's pure music, and I'll just go on to say
That I sometimes have a notion that the angels talk that way!

There's a chapter in this story I'd be happy to destroy;
I could burn it up before you with a mighty sight of joy;
But I'll go ahead and give it--not in detail, no, my friend,
For it takes five years of reading before you find the end.

My Annie's folks relented--at least, in some degree;
They sent one time for Annie, but they didn't send for me.
The old man wrote the message with a heart as hot and dry
As a furnace--'Annie Mullen, come and see your mother die.'

I saw the slur intended--why I fancied I could see
The old man shoot the insult like a poison dart at me;
And in that heat of passion I swore an inward oath
That if Annie pleased her father she could never please us both.

I watched her--dark and sullen--as she hurried on her shawl;
I watched her--calm and cruel, though I saw her tear-drops fall;
I watched her--cold and heartless, though I heard her moaning,
call
For mercy from high Heaven--and I smiled throughout it all.

Why even when she kissed me, and her tears were on my brow,
As she murmured, 'George, forgive me--I must go to mother now!'
Such hate there was within me that I answered not at all,
But calm, and cold and cruel, I smiled throughout it all.

But a shadow in the doorway caught my eye, and then the face
Full of innocence and sunshine of little baby Grace.
And I snatched her up and kissed her, and I softened through and
through
For a minute when she told me 'I must kiss her muvver too.'

I remember, at the starting, how I tried to freeze again
As I watched them slowly driving down the little crooked lane--
When Annie shouted something that ended in a cry,
And how I tried to whistle and it fizzled in a sigh.

I remember running after, with a glimmer in my sight--
Pretending I'd discovered that the traces wasn't right;
And the last that I remember, as they disappeared from view,
Was little Grace a-calling, 'I see papa! Howdy-do!'

And left alone to ponder, I again took up my hate
For the old man who would chuckle that I was desolate;
And I mouthed my wrongs in mutters till my pride called up the
pain
His last insult had given me--until I smiled again

Till the wild beast in my nature was raging in the den--
With no one now to quell it, and I wrote a letter then
Full of hissing things, and heated with so hot a heat of hate
That my pen flashed out black lightning at a most terrific rate.

I wrote that 'she had wronged me when she went away from me--
Though to see her dying mother 'twas her father's victory,
And a woman that could waver when her husband's pride was rent
Was no longer worthy of it.' And I shut the house and went.

To tell of my long exile would be of little good--
Though I couldn't half-way tell it, and I wouldn't if I could!
I could tell of California--of a wild and vicious life;
Of trackless plains, and mountains, and the Indian's
scalping-knife.

I could tell of gloomy forests howling wild with threats of
death;
I could tell of fiery deserts that have scorched me with their
breath;
I could tell of wretched outcasts by the hundreds, great and
small,
And could claim the nasty honor of the greatest of them all.

I could tell of toil and hardship; and of sickness and disease,
And hollow-eyed starvation, but I tell you, friend, that these
Are trifles in comparison with what a fellow feels
With that bloodhound, Remorsefulness, forever at his heels.

I remember--worn and weary of the long, long years of care,
When the frost of time was making early harvest of my hair--
I remember, wrecked and hopeless of a rest beneath the sky,
My resolve to quit the country, and to seek the East, and die.

I remember my long journey, like a dull, oppressive dream,
Across the empty prairies till I caught the distant gleam
Of a city in the beauty of its broad and shining stream
On whose bosom, flocked together, float the mighty swans of
steam.

I remember drifting with them till I found myself again
In the rush and roar and rattle of the engine and the train;
And when from my surroundings something spoke of child and wife,
It seemed the train was rumbling through a tunnel in my life.

Then I remember something--like a sudden burst of light--
That don't exactly tell it, but I couldn't tell it right--
A something clinging to me with its arms around my neck--
A little girl, for instance--or an angel, I expect--

For she kissed me, cried and called me 'her dear papa,' and I
felt
My heart was pure virgin gold, and just about to melt--
And so it did--it melted in a mist of gleaming rain
When she took my hand and whispered, 'My mama's on the train.'

There's some things I can dwell on, and get off pretty well,
But the balance of this story I know I couldn't tell;
So I ain't going to try it, for to tell the reason why--
I'm so chicken-hearted lately I'd be certain 'most to cry.

Coming, clean from the Maryland-end
Of this great National Road of ours,
Through your vast West; with the time to spend,
Stopping for days in the main towns, where
Every citizen seemed a friend,
And friends grew thick as the wayside flowers,--
I found no thing that I might narrate
More singularly strange or queer
Than a thing I found in your sister-state
Ohio,--at a river-town--down here
In my notebook: _Zanesville--situate
On the stream Muskingum--broad and clear,
And navigable, through half the year,
North, to Coshocton; south, as far
As Marietta._--But these facts are
Not of the _story_, but the _scene_
Of the simple little tale I mean
To tell _directly_--from this, straight through
To the _end_ that is best worth listening to:

Eastward of Zanesville, two or three
Miles from the town, as our stage drove in,
I on the driver's seat, and he
Pointing out this and that to me,--
On beyond us--among the rest--
A grovey slope, and a fluttering throng
Of little children, which he 'guessed'
Was a picnic, as we caught their thin
High laughter, as we drove along,
Clearer and clearer. Then suddenly
He turned and asked, with a curious grin,
What were my views on _Slavery? 'Why?'_
I asked, in return, with a wary eye.
'Because,' he answered, pointing his whip
At a little, whitewashed house and shed
On the edge of the road by the grove ahead,--
'Because there are two slaves _there_,' he said--
'Two Black slaves that I've passed each trip
For eighteen years.--Though they've been set free,
They have been slaves ever since!' said he.
And, as our horses slowly drew
Nearer the little house in view,
All briefly I heard the history
Of this little old Negro woman and
Her husband, house and scrap of land;
How they were slaves and had been made free
By their dying master, years ago
In old Virginia; and then had come
North here into a _free_ state--so,
Safe forever, to found a home--
For themselves alone?--for they left South there
Five strong sons, who had, alas!
All been sold ere it came to pass
This first old master with his last breath
Had freed the _parents_.--(He went to death
Agonized and in dire despair
That the poor slave _children_ might not share
Their parents' freedom. And wildly then
He moaned for pardon and died. Amen!)

Thus, with their freedom, and little sum
Of money left them, these two had come
North, full twenty long years ago;
And, settling there, they had hopefully
Gone to work, in their simple way,
Hauling--gardening--raising sweet
Corn, and popcorn.--Bird and bee
In the garden-blooms and the apple-tree
Singing with them throughout the slow
Summer's day, with its dust and heat--
The crops that thirst and the rains that fail;
Or in Autumn chill, when the clouds hung low,
And hand-made hominy might find sale
In the near town-market; or baking pies
And cakes, to range in alluring show
At the little window, where the eyes
Of the Movers' children, driving past,
Grew fixed, till the big white wagons drew
Into a halt that would sometimes last
Even the space of an hour or two--
As the dusty, thirsty travelers made
Their noonings there in the beeches' shade
By the old black Aunty's spring-house, where,
Along with its cooling draughts, were found
Jugs of her famous sweet spruce-beer,
Served with her gingerbread-horses there,
While Aunty's snow-white cap bobbed 'round
Till the children's rapture knew no bound,
As she sang and danced for them, quavering clear
And high the chant of her old slave-days--

'Oh, Lo'd, Jinny! my toes is so',
Dancin' on yo' sandy flo'!'

Even so had they wrought all ways
To earn the pennies, and hoard them, too,--
And with what ultimate end in view?--
They were saving up money enough to be
Able, in time, to buy their own
Five children back.

Ah! the toil gone through!
And the long delays and the heartaches, too,
And self-denials that they had known!
But the pride and glory that was theirs
When they first hitched up their shackly cart
For the long, long journey South.--The start
In the first drear light of the chilly dawn,
With no friends gathered in grieving throng,--
With no farewells and favoring prayers;
But, as they creaked and jolted on,
Their chiming voices broke in song--

''Hail, all hail! don't you see the stars a-fallin'?
Hail, all hail! I'm on my way.
Gideon[1] am
A healin' ba'm--
I belong to the blood-washed army.
Gideon am
A healin' ba'm--
On my way!''

And their _return!_--with their oldest boy
Along with them! Why, their happiness
Spread abroad till it grew a joy
_Universal_--It even reached
And thrilled the town till the _Church_ was stirred
Into suspecting that wrong was wrong!--
And it stayed awake as the preacher preached
A _Real_ 'Love'-text that he had not long
To ransack for in the Holy Word.

And the son, restored, and welcomed so,
Found service readily in the town;
And, with the parents, sure and slow,
_He_ went 'saltin' de cole cash down.'

So with the _next_ boy--and each one
In turn, till _four_ of the five at last
Had been bought back; and, in each case,
With steady work and good homes not
Far from the parents, _they_ chipped in
To the family fund, with an equal grace.
Thus they managed and planned and wrought,
And the old folks throve--Till the night before
They were to start for the lone last son
In the rainy dawn--their money fast
Hid away in the house,--two mean,
Murderous robbers burst the door.
...Then, in the dark, was a scuffle--a fall--
An old man's gasping cry--and then
A woman's fife-like shriek.

...Three men
Splashing by on horseback heard
The summons: And in an instant all
Sprung to their duty, with scarce a word.
And they were _in time_--not only to save
The lives of the old folks, but to bag
Both the robbers, and buck-and-gag
And land them safe in the county-jail--
Or, as Aunty said, with a blended awe
And subtlety,--'Safe in de calaboose whah
De dawgs caint bite 'em!'

--So prevail
The faithful!--So had the Lord upheld
His servants of both deed and prayer,--
HIS the glory unparalleled--
_Theirs_ the reward,--their every son
Free, at last, as the parents were!
And, as the driver ended there
In front of the little house, I said,
All fervently, 'Well done! well done!'
At which he smiled, and turned his head
And pulled on the leaders' lines and--'See!'
He said,--''you can read old Aunty's sign?'
And, peering down through these specs of mine
On a little, square board-sign, I read:

'Stop, traveler, if you think it fit,
And quench your thirst for a-fip-and-a-bit.
The rocky spring is very clear,
And soon converted into beer.'

And, though I read aloud, I could
Scarce hear myself for laugh and shout
Of children--a glad multitude
Of little people, swarming out
Of the picnic-grounds I spoke about.--
And in their rapturous midst, I see
Again--through mists of memory--
A black old Negress laughing up
At the driver, with her broad lips rolled
Back from her teeth, chalk-white, and gums
Redder than reddest red-ripe plums.
He took from her hand the lifted cup
Of clear spring-water, pure and cold,
And passed it to me: And I raised my hat
And drank to her with a reverence that
My conscience knew was justly due
The old black face, and the old eyes, too--
The old black head, with its mossy mat
Of hair, set under its cap and frills
White as the snows on Alpine hills;
Drank to the old _black_ smile, but yet
Bright as the sun on the violet,--
Drank to the gnarled and knuckled old
Black hands whose palms had ached and bled
And pitilessly been worn pale
And white almost as the palms that hold
Slavery's lash while the victim's wail
Fails as a crippled prayer might fail.--
Aye, with a reverence infinite,
I drank to the old black face and head--
The old black breast with its life of light--
The old black hide with its heart of gold.