Explore "Heat-Lightning" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was a curious quiet for a space / Directly following: and in the face / Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow / Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw / Long ere the crash of speech. -- He broke the spell -- / The host: -- The Traveler's story, told so well, / He said, had wakened there within his breast / A yearning, as it were, to know _the rest_ -- / That all unwritten sequence that the Lord / Of Righteousness must write with flame and sword, / Some awful session of His patient thought -- / Just then it was, his good old mother caught / His blazing eye -- so that its fire became / But as an ember -- though it burned the same.
It seemed to her, she said, that she had heard / It was the _Heavenly_ Parent never erred, / And not the _earthly_ one that had such grace: / "Therefore, my son," she said, with lifted face / And eyes, "let no one dare anticipate / The Lord's intent. While _He_ waits, _we_ will wait"