Explore "The Boys" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Where are they? -- the friends of my childhood enchanted -- / The clear, laughing eyes looking back in my own, / And the warm, chubby fingers my palms have so wanted, / As when we raced over / Pink pastures of clover, / And mocked the quail's whir and the bumblebee's drone?
Have the breezes of time blown their blossomy faces / Forever adrift down the years that are flown?
Am I never to see them romp back to their places, / Where over the meadow, / In sunshine and shadow, / The meadow-larks trill, and the bumblebees drone?
Where are they? Ah! dim in the dust lies the clover; / The whippoorwill's call has a sorrowful tone, / And the dove's -- I have wept at it over and over; -- / I want the glad luster / Of youth, and the cluster / Of faces asleep where the bumblebees drone!