After this, he did work on
newspapers and became a traveling lecturer, and reader of his own poems.
Much of his poetry charms us with its presentation of rural life. In _The
Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems_ (1883), it is a delight to
accompany him
"When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,"
or when
"The summer winds is sniffin' round the bloomin' locus' trees,
And the clover in the pastur' is a big day fer the bees,"
or again, in _Neighborly Poems_ (1891), as he listens to _The First
Bluebird_ singing with
"A breezy, treesy, beesy hum,
Too sweet fer anything!"
We welcome him as the champion of a new democratic flower. In his poem,
_The Clover_, he says:--
"But what is the lily and all of the rest
Of the flowers, to a man with a hart in his brest
That was dipped brimmin' full of the honey and dew
Of the sweet clover-blossoms his babyhood knew?"
Like Eugene Field, Riley loved children. His _Rhymes of Childhood_ (1890)
contains such favorites as _The Raggedy Man_, _Our Hired Girl_, _Little
Orphant Annie_, with its bewitching warning about the "_Gobble-uns_," and
the pathetic _Little Mahala Ashcraft_.
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