Explore "The Days Gone by. (down Around the River Poems)" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O the days gone by! O the days gone by! / The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye; / The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail / As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale; / When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky, / And my happy heart brimmed over in the days gone by.
In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped / By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, / And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink / Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, / And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry / And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.
O the days gone by! O the days gone by! / The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye; / The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring -- / The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything, -- / When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, / In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.