Babyhood
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.
Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story,--
Let's find the _pictures_, and fancy all the rest:--
We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory
Than Old Time, the story-teller, at his very best!
Turn to the brook, where the honeysuckle, tipping
O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze,
And the bee and humming-bird in ecstacy are sipping
From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust trees.
Turn to the lane, where we used to 'teeter-totter,'
Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold,
Laughing at the lazy cattle wading in the water
Where the ripples dimple round the buttercups of gold:
Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel
Of the sunny sandbar in the middle-tide,
And the ghostly dragonfly pauses in his travel
To rest like a blossom where the water-lily died.
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 85 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB cdcd efef agag hihi ABAB |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,173 |
Words | 218 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Babyhood" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/20838/babyhood>.
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