Explore "The Old-Fashioned Bible" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood / That now but in mem'ry I sadly review; / The old meeting-house at the edge of the wildwood, / The rail fence, and horses all tethered thereto; / The low, sloping roof, and the bell in the steeple, / The doves that came fluttering out overhead / As it solemnly gathered the God-fearing people / To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. / The old-fashioned Bible -- / The dust-covered Bible -- / The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read.
The blessed old volume! The face bent above it -- / As now I recall it -- is gravely severe, / Though the reverent eye that droops downward to love it / Makes grander the text through the lens of a tear, / And, as down his features it trickles and glistens, / The cough of the deacon is stilled, and his head / Like a haloed patriarch's leans as he listens / To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. / The old-fashioned Bible -- / The dust-covered Bible -- / The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read.