Explore "Envoy" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Many pleasures of youth have been buoyantly sung -- / And, borne on the winds of delight, may they beat / With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young, / And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat! -- / Yet sweetest of all of the musical throng, / Though least of the numbers that upward aspire, / Is the one rising now into wavering song, / As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
'Tis a Winter long dead that beleaguers my door / And muffles his steps in the snows of the past: / And I see, in the embers I'm dreaming before, / Lost faces of love as they looked on me last: -- / The round, laughing eyes of the desk-mate of old / Gleam out for a moment with truant desire -- / Then fade and are lost in a City of Gold, / As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.