Explore "The Little Lady" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O The Little Lady's dainty / As the picture in a book, / And her hands are creamy-whiter / Than the water-lilies look; / Her laugh's the undrown'd music / Of the maddest meadow-brook. -- / Yet all in vain I praise The Little Lady!
Her eyes are blue and dewy / As the glimmering Summer-dawn, -- / Her face is like the eglantine / Before the dew is gone; / And were that honied mouth of hers / A bee's to feast upon, / He'd be a bee bewildered, Little Lady!
Her brow makes light look sallow; / And the sunshine, I declare, / Is but a yellow jealousy / Awakened by her hair -- / For O the dazzling glint of it / Nor sight nor soul can bear, -- / So Love goes groping for The Little Lady.
And yet she's neither Nymph nor Fay, / Nor yet of Angelkind: -- / She's but a racing school-girl, with / Her hair blown out behind / And tremblingly unbraided by / The fingers of the Wind, / As it wildly swoops upon The Little Lady.