IRISH-AMERICAN-L Archives

From: "Jean R." <>
Subject: "A Barefoot Boy" -- "Hoosier Poet" James Whitcomb RILEY (1849-1916)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 14:30:08 -0700

A BAREFOOT BOY

A barefoot boy! I mark him at his play
For May is here once more, and so
is he,
His dusty trousers, rolled half to the
knee,
And his bare ankles grimy, too, as
they
Cross-hatchings of the nettle, in array
Of feverish stripes, hint vividly to me
Of woody pathways winding
endlessly
Along the creek, where even
yesterday
He plunged his shrinking body --
gasped and shook --
Yet called the water "warm," with
never lack
Of joy. And so, half enviously I look
upon this graceless barefoot and
his track,.
His toe stubbed -- ay, his big toe-
nail knocked back
Like unto the clasp of an old
pocketbook.

-- James Whitcomb Riley won fame as the "Hoosier Poet" He wrote much verse in pure English, but his most popular works are in the dialect of his home state, IN. The son of a lawyer, he left school after grammar school and worked as a sign painter and later as an actor in a medicine show. In his spare time he composed songs and revised plays. Returning to Greenfield, he worked on the local paper, then on the "Anderson (IN) Democrat." In 1877 he joined the "Indianapolis Journal." He began to contribute poems to several papers under an assumed name. His verses made him famous and he traveled about the country lecturing and reading his poems. Riley's remote genealogy is apparently in dispute - reaching back to Cork, Ireland or, perhaps, to an English Ryland family..

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• "A Barefoot Boy" -- "Hoosier Poet" James Whitcomb RILEY (1849-1916) by "Jean R." <>