Explore "The Traveling Man" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. Could I pour out the nectar the gods only can, / I would fill up my glass to the brim / And drink the success of the Traveling Man, / And the house represented by him; / And could I but tincture the glorious draught / With his smiles, as I drank to him then, / And the jokes he has told and the laughs he has laughed, / I would fill up the goblet again --
And drink to the sweetheart who gave him good-by / With a tenderness thrilling him this / Very hour, as he thinks of the tear in her eye / That salted the sweet of her kiss; / To her truest of hearts and her fairest of hands / I would drink, with all serious prayers, / Since the heart she must trust is a Traveling Man's, / And as warm as the ulster he wears.