Living

A Spring Song and a Later

by James Whitcomb Riley 1849–1916

From Riley Songs of Home (1910)

Living

She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I heard
The mirth of my glad infancy--
The orchard's earliest bird--
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,
And there the happy honey-bees
In dewy gleam and gloom.

So purely, sweetly on the sense
Of heart and spirit fell
Her song of Spring, its influence--
Still irresistible,--
Commands me here--with eyes ablur--
To mate her bright refrain.
Though I but shed a rhyme for her
As dim as Autumn rain.

MLA

Riley, James Whitcomb. “A Spring Song and a Later.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/423/.

Chicago

Riley, James Whitcomb. “A Spring Song and a Later.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/423/.

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