Read "An Impromptu on Roller Skates" by James Whitcomb Riley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Rumble, tumble, growl, and grate! / Skip, and trip, and gravitate! / Lunge, and plunge, and thrash the planks / With your blameless, shameless shanks: / In excruciating pain, / Stand upon your head again, / And, uncoiling kink by kink, / Kick the roof out of the rink!
In derisive bursts of mirth, / Drop ka-whop and jar the earth! / Jolt your lungs down in your socks, / Oh! tempestuous equinox / Of dismembered legs and arms! / Strew your ways with wild alarms; / Fameward skoot and ricochet / On your glittering vertebrae!