Explore "Time of Clearer Twitterings" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. Time of crisp and tawny leaves, / And of tarnished harvest sheaves, / And of dusty grasses -- weeds -- / Thistles, with their tufted seeds / Voyaging the Autumn breeze / Like as fairy argosies: / Time of quicker flash of wings, / And of clearer twitterings / In the grove, or deeper shade / Of the tangled everglade, -- / Where the spotted water-snake / Coils him in the sunniest brake; / And the bittern, as in fright, / Darts, in sudden, slanting flight, / Southward, while the startled crane / Films his eyes in dreams again.
II. Down along the dwindled creek / We go loitering. We speak / Only with old questionings / Of the dear remembered things / Of the days of long ago, / When the stream seemed thus and so / In our boyish eyes: -- The bank / Greener then, through rank on rank / Of the mottled sycamores, / Touching tops across the shores: / Here, the hazel thicket stood -- / There, the almost pathless wood / Where the shellbark hickory tree / Rained its wealth on you and me.