Explore "The Ripest Peach" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The ripest peach is highest on the tree -- / And so her love, beyond the reach of me, / Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes bow / Her heart down to me where I worship now!
She looms aloft where every eye may see / The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!
I may not reach here from the orchard grass.
I drink the sunshine showered past her lips / As roses drain the dewdrop as it drips.
The ripest peach is highest on the tree, / And so mine eyes gaze upward eagerly.
Why -- why do I not turn away in wrath / And pluck some heart here hanging in my path -- ?
Lover's lower boughs bend with them -- but, ah me!
The ripest peach is highest on the tree!