Riley Songs of Home eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 53 pages of information about Riley Songs of Home.

Riley Songs of Home eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 53 pages of information about Riley Songs of Home.

Sometime I may need it so,
  Groping somewhere in the night,
It will seem to me as though
  Just a touch, however light,
    Would make all the darkness day,
    And along some sunny way
    Lead me through an April-shower
    Of my tears to this fair hour.

O the present is too sweet
  To go on forever thus! 
Round the corner of the street
  Who can say what waits for us?—­
    Meeting—­greeting, night and day,
    Faring each the selfsame way—­
    Still somewhere the path must end.—­
    Reach your hand to me, my friend!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN

Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me,
Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity,
You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart,
Which was like a healin’ ’intment to the sorrow of my hart.

When I burried my first womern, William Leachman, it was you
Had the only consolation that I could listen to—­
Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from the blow,
And when you said I’d do the same, I knowed you’d ort to know.

But that time I’ll long remember; how I wundered here and thare—­
Through the settin’-room and kitchen, and out in the open air—­
And the snowflakes whirlin’, whirlin’, and the fields a frozen glare,
And the neghbors’ sleds and wagons congergatin’ ev’rywhare.

I turned my eyes to’rds heaven, but the sun was hid away;
I turned my eyes to’rds earth again, but all was cold and gray;
And the clock, like ice a-crackin’, clickt the icy hours in two—­
And my eyes’d never thawed out ef it hadn’t been fer you!

We set thare by the smoke-house—­me and you out thare alone—­
Me a-thinkin’—­you a-talkin’ in a soothin’ undertone—­
You a-talkin’—­me a-thinkin’ of the summers long ago,
And a-writin’ “Marthy—­Marthy” with my finger in the snow!

[Illustration]

William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could then;
And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again,
And I see the tears a-drippin’ from your own eyes, as you say: 
“Be rickonciled and bear it—­we but linger fer a day!”

At the last Old Settlers’ Meetin’ we went j’intly, you and me—­
Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be;
And sence I can remember, from the time we’ve neghbored here,
In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer.

It was better than the meetin’, too, that nine-mile talk we had
Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so bad;
When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on “Shanks’s mare,”
And “blaze” a road fer them behind that had to travel thare.

And now we was a-trottin’ ’long a level gravel pike,
In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like—­
Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind,
A-settin’ in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect peace of mind!

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Riley Songs of Home from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.