Explore "Babyhood" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger!
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray; / Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger / Back to the lotus-lands of the far-away!
Turn back the leaves of life. -- Don't read the story. -- / Let's find the pictures, and fancy all the rest; / We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory / Than old Time, the story-teller, at his very best.
Turn to the brook where the honeysuckle tipping / O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze, / And the bee and humming-bird in ecstacy are sipping / From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust-trees.
Turn to the lane where we used to "teeter-totter,"
Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold -- / Laughing at the lazy cattle wading in the water / Where the ripples dimple round the buttercups of gold;
Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel / Of the sunny sand-bar in the middle tide, / And the ghostly dragon-fly pauses in his travel / To rest like a blossom where the water-lily died.
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger!
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray; / Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger / Back to the lotus-lands of the far-away!