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JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY , THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT HOME

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT
by Thomas Earl Williams with primary illustrations by Katherine Kuonen and the great assistance of Robert Tinsley with Riley artifacts, Copyright, 1997, Thomas Earl Williams

Part 13

SPRAIVOLL

James Whitcomb Riley as a Singer to the Humble

AN INSPIRER OF SWEET
POETRY FROM THE MESSAGE
OF THE "CHRIST HYMN"

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AN INSPIRER OF SWEET POETRY FROM THE MESSAGE OF THE "CHRIST HYMN"

Who was Riley's great singer of poetry?

This is Spraivoll, "the tune fool." It is Riley's most enigmatic and engagingly distant self. She wears a Godly robe and her utterances sparkle and shine as rain and lightning. She is the Riley who sang God's praise as a kenotic choir member and drew energy from the silence of prayer. She is the Riley of "Jucklet's Prayer in Contemplation of AEo" (from "The Flying Islands of the Night"):

JUCKLET'S PRAYER TO AEO

"May

I not have leave to pray

All self to pass away -"

She was the kenotic Riley emptied of all his selves and any pretensions he might have or hope to have. She sang in despair of Riley's depression and alcoholism and out of the depths of Riley's anguish over the death of his mother, the hurt of the fate of living in an age he could not see reconciled with the truths of the American Civil War, and the death of Nellie Cooley.

Hope was a woman to Riley. Women gave Riley all the "hope" he knew about in the world. He turned himself into a woman to assume this special "inspired" role of Spraivoll in "The FlyinE-E, Islands of the Night."

To live on. Riley needed hope for the future. This was a commodity that Incarnation Theology dealt in. In the year after Riley wrote "The Flying Islands of the Night," he expressed what sustained him.

HOPE (1879)

Hope, bending o'er me one time, snowed the flakes

Of her white touches on my folded sight.
And whispered, half rebukingly, "What makes

My little girl so sorrowful to-night?"

O scarce did I unclasp my lids, or lift

Their tear-glued fringes, as with blind embrace I caught within my arms the mother-gifi.

And with wild kisses dappled all her face.

SPRAIVOLL • 377

That was a baby dream of long ago:

My fate is fanged with frost and tongued with flame: My woman-soul, chased make through the snow, Stumbles and staggers on without an aim,

And yet, here in my agony, sometimes

A faint voice reaches down from some far height, And whispers through a glamouring of rhymes, -"What makes my little girl so sad to-night?"

Riley's friend. Lew Wallace.

The poem "Hope" was originally enclosed in a letter of September 18, 1879, to Elizabeth Kahle. Upon sending her the poem, Riley added, "Here is a little poem that wrote itself. I hardly know if I fully comprehend it, but something tells me you will like it, for all its strangeness, and I trust you will." The poem was a favorite of Riley's great friend and spir­itual advisor, Rev. Myron Reed, a kenotic minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Riley poured not only all of the masculini­ty but also all of the femininity he could imagine into "logos" fantasizing about the American Nineteenth Century experi­ence. There is nothing strange about this approach. The root of American thought derives from the Neo-Platonic concept whereby truth derives out of "feel" rather than the Platonic vanity that truth can be learned through objective rationality. Much of Christianity's power is in this under­standing as is confirmed by Paul.'

From the martyrdom of Jesus on the cross, the true kenotics of the Nineteenth Century derived their key concept of Hope. As the Scottish kenotic apologist A.B. Bryce wrote in

His novel. BEN HUR: A TALE OF Tim CHRIST (1880) was the age's great kenotic depiction of the humiliated Jesus of the "Christ Hymn" who cures Ben I tor's mother and sister of leprosy, and yet refuses Ben Hur's offer of an army to save Him from being crucified. Here our boy of the oppressed Jewry (Ramon Novarro of the 1925 movie version) battles a might Roman, Massala (Francis X. Bushman) in a widely publicized chariot race.

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THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST, "(Jesus) had announced Himself as the King, not only God's servant, but God's Son, the Hope of those who wait­ed for the consolation of Israel." Hope was necessary for a people coming to understand their biological antecedents were in evolutionary forms - arbo­real to slime- dwellers. Hope was in an act of degradation - the descent of Christ into an evolving world.

As Incarnation Theology struck into the American heartland from Germany no longer do we find American Protestants of the American heart­land worshipping a regal God on a distant, glorious throne governing life through discoverable Newtonian laws of mechanics. Now we find Christian Protestants relying on the humble Christ of Philippians. For example, in Riley's hometown we have the Elder A.J. Branham recounting the start of a Greenfield (Indiana) Protestant church. "In April 1854, Brother James L. Thornberry of Kentucky held a two week meeting (in Greenfield), which resulted in quite a number of additions to the church. It was at this meeting that I was brought from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God; and from that day to this I have never regretted the casting of my lot with the poor, despised Nazarene and his humble followers." (As reported in the Hancock DEMOCRAT, July 25, 1889).

Prayer to a humiliated God became Riley's private habit as a foil to his alcoholism and delirious episodes. He prayed to a God who accepted cruci­fixion as glory. This was a God who healed the sick and loved the humble. This was a God of the vulnerable, tormented and tremens shaking alcoholic like Riley and so many of his circle of friends. This was a God who did not avoid taking the form of an evolving life form such as humanity.

In a Nineteenth Century world in which natural selection principles were deemed to order society by social Darwinists, where is there comfort? Why not merely succumb to existential terror? Does not fate govern all? Is not death the answer to every evolutionary life? Riley's time was faced with a revolutionized fundamental pattern of thought. The biblical God who creat­ed the world according to a Genesis account of a seven day creation was no longer for purchase. Intellectuals such as Robert Ingersoll were touring the country in Riley's time announcing the Bible was "hokey folklore." Was hope gone too?

Incarnation theology answered social Darwinism. A Mid-Western American Methodist kenotic theologian of Riley's day, R.J. Cooke, D.D, spoke thus.

SPRAIVOLL • 379

CHRIST AS THE ANSWER TO THE LOWLY ORIGIN OF MAN

"Whatever physical science may have to say as to the lowly origin of man, here is what he is. God does not have to force himself into human nature, and when in it find himself unable to manifest himself in a throughly reveal­ing capacity in the human, nor is the human unable to bear the weight, the presence of deity. But because man is spirit, because he has intelligence, and reason, and will, and affection, because he is a moral being, Infinite Spirit, Infinite Wisdom, and Infinite Love can adjust himself to the spirit of man -laying every power and quality of God alongside of every corre­sponding faculty in the human soul without violence to the soul - and thus manifest himself as God in the flesh. The astounding revelation dawns on us for the first time that the human may embody the eternal."

Cooke finds the principle of the Incarnation embedded in literature by which kenosis teaches the "infinite worth of man." Not just literature, and the laws, but also the society of the Christian nations are said to depend upon this truth, that it modified Roman law, that it motivated the struggles for freedom in Western civilization, that it abolished slavery and is behind reforms, underlies civilization, political and social institution. He finds the principle working in the struggles for wealth and power, in conflicts between labor and capital, alignments of class against class, within which the reaffirmation of the infinite worth of man is bound to prevail. Human progress will not bow to introduction of the machines of the Industrial Revolution because people are children of God and the human whose form in which God came kenotically is a form of life in redemption.

Kenotic literature is urged because the "ache of humanity is heart-ache. There is need then for the reaffirmation of the infinite worth of man; need for the incoming power of some transfiguring idea on the common life, some heaven-born vision of the innate glory of humanity, which will once more exalt man above the level of the brainless, soulless machine at his side - above the beast of burden, above the degrading passion for power and material grandeur as the highest ends - and dignify the man. "

Spraivoll began writing poetry to answer the call for a kenotic literature.
Spraivoll did not live so long as Riley's other selves. She abruptly depart‑
ed after Riley achieved fame and wealth in the late 1880's. While she sang,
the American people listened enraptured. No poet had embraced the idea of
the Philippians "Christ Hymn" before so completely. Riley's poetry became
more and more kenotic until one finds him subsuming all of the structures,

380 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

meters and figures of poetry into characterizations of humility and service within his "Benjamin Johnson of Boone" poetry.

The great poetry of James Whitcomb Riley was thoroughly kenotic in the forefront of the great popularization of this theological movement of Riley's day. Riley empties himself to write poetry in the American experience of his day.

Spraivoll is the Riley who sings with the newfound understandings Riley gained from the Incarnationists. She is the Riley who engages his epoch and takes to song but often turns them into hymns.

The first clearly identifiably kenotic of Riley's poems is "Old Fashioned Roses."

OLD FASHIONED ROSES (1879)

SPRAIVOLL • 381

We must pick a bunch and putt 'em In her hand when she wuz dead.

But, as I wuz a-sayin',

They ain't no style about 'ern Very gaudy er displayin',

But I wouldn't be without 'em, -'Cause I'm happier in these posies, And hollyhawks and sich.

Than the hummin'-bird 'at noses In the roses of the rich.

The proposal of this poem is that the humble has value. Thereafter to Riley there was no poetry by Spraivoll which did not evoke humiliation if not degradation.

The poem is far more radical that we could now hardly imagine. We recall that Riley's age was sometimes called the age of Hubert Spencer and those who treated the humble things with contempt and marked such with a destiny of extinction. The inferior species, the humble "old-fashioned roses," must be eradicated in favor of superior new varieties as a result of the "survival of the fittest." In the background of the age, we hear John D. Rockefeller, a contemporary American and one of its most prominent citi­zens, declaring his opinion in a Sunday School address

THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN BUSINESS LIKENED
TO AN AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE

"The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest...The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a aw of God."

God favors the rich and efforts of those trying to get rich. Riley is saying here that the less adaptive humble rose is preferable to Rockefeller's "American Beauty." A new voice was being raised in the American culture.

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Riley derives such a conclusion through the medium of temperance Christianity empowered from the German theologians of the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Every experience Christ encountered, they taught, involved humility. Nothing else was real. Humiliation is predicable to the divinity of Christ. There is infinite moral value to every humiliation encoun­tered in life because this reminds one of the contrast between the Godly and human states of the form of Christ.

Longfellow, near the end of his life, approved this poem when recited to him by Riley on Dec. 31, 1881 at Craigie House, Cambridge. Longfellow's ill heath stopped him from attending Riley's Tremont Temple reading of his poetry so Riley went to meet Longfellow. Although one cannot say that tran­scendentalism in its twilight years was thus passing the torch to Riley's kenoticism in the field of poetics, one can say that a poet cognizant of the sensibilities of his time acknowledged another. It was often said at the time that this meeting of Riley and Longfellow marked the passage of national poet from one man to the next, the popular transcendentalist of the early Nineteenth Century to the popular kenotic of the post Civil-War American Protestant nation.

From the date of publication of "Old Fashioned Roses" in the Indianapolis Morning HERALD, Riley was read on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and shortly thereafter began unceasing platform lecturing. In lecturing, Riley explained his use of dialect in this poem by saying it per­mitted him to convey "worth of character and truthfulness to life," stating the language of this poem was "the language of an old-timer, who once took the trouble to explain to me his love of the flowers about his doorway." About this old man, Riley added, "Colleges may disown him but God does not. Poetry is purity....Where purity abounds, poetry abounds." Holding a bible, Riley added, -This Book of Books says the pure in heart shall see God. Our old man in the doorway was poetic because his heart was pure. He had the poetry of character, and will, I believe, as certainly see God as the fishermen saw Him, who walked with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee."

SPRAIVOLL AS THE ANSWER TO A RIDDLE

Riley's autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night" con­tains a riddle spoken by a voice later identified as Spraivoll, the poetical Riley.

SPRAIVOLL • 383

Rain, to the Riley contemporary to this poem meant "renewal" (SEE: Riley's poem, "The Rain") and wind meant despair of the night. (SEE: R i ley' s poem "Bells Jangled").

The answer to the riddle is Spraivoll.

The drift is this. When Riley is being revived from his alcoholism and he no longer drinks "red eye" so as make despair complain and flee, all of the play characters of Riley except Crestillomeem will utter poetry from the mouth of Riley's poetic self, Spraivoll. The minstrel Jucklet will utter enter­taining narrative poetry. Amphine will utter romantic poetry. Krung will utter official poetry. And Spraivoll herself will utter the most special of all, Riley's kenotic poetry.

This poem was singled out for criticism by Riley's friend, Benjamin Parker. Shortly after the publication of "Flying Islands of the Night" the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD printed a criticism of it on September 14, 1878, by Benjamin Parker, the poet-editor of the New Castle MERCURY and a poet in his own right:

"Some of the friends of the MERCURY have said to us: "Let us have an end of this talk about Riley. We are tired of it, and the fellow's head will burst wide open if the editors are going to write about him so much." We are not unconscious of the danger, but Riley keeps intruding himself and the public seems to be pleased with his intrusions, and therefore he remains a growing quantity, a noticeable quantify if you please. The last of these intrusions, or if not the last the lengthiest, is a piece of nightmare or "thing­urn-me-jig" rhyme called "The Flying Islands of the Night," which occupies a whole page of the Saturday Herald of August 24. What is it? Well we don't know. It is a waif of nothing on a warp of nought. It is a drama in which

384 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

beings appear that never existed anywhere except in Riley's brain, and they inhabit the countries the very names of which are foreign to anything else on the earth except Riley's fancy. They are not fairies, nor elfish things, such as used to inhabit earth and hold high carnival in the corollas of wood flow­ers, but they are new creations. We can't describe the poem and we shan't try. It is full of pretty pictures, delicate creations of the most sensitive genius, but no practical soul can ever guess what they mean. Take this for example:

When kings are kings, and kings are men ‑

And the lonesome rain is raining -

0 who shall rule from the red throne then, And who shall wield the scepter when ‑

When the winds are all complaining?

When men are men, and men are kings ‑

And the lonesome rain is raining -O who shall list as the minstrel sings Of the ermine robes and the signet rings

When the winds are all complaining?"

Beautiful, isn't it? but what does it mean'? Well, what does Poe's "Ulalume" mean? It means the same that this does, an expression of the beautiful in melody and rhythm, that is so exquisite that of itself it consti­tutes a living excellence. But Mr. Riley wants to call a halt in that direction now. One or two successes in nonsense rhyme is all that any man can achieve. The public is patient, but practical, and too much of that sort of things puts it out of humor, and once out of humor it is hard to woo back. We also wish softly but firmly to suggest to Mr. Riley that certain tricks, which the public is beginning to understand, by which he seeks to give him­self notoriety must now be abandoned. He has the elements of the true poet in him. He has been very successful in illuminating them, and has made an excellent start. Now he must depend upon the merits of what he produces to sustain and increase the reputation already achieved. Tricks and sub­terfuges will serve him no longer, and he must turn his back upon them."

Riley's "The Flying Islands of the Night" was the most misunderstood poem in American literature. A poem about one's soul is necessarily ambiguous.

SPRAIVOLL • 385

While other persona wrote poetry, Spraivoll's poetry was the most spe­cial. Spraivoll's poetry was written primarily out of Riley's vulnerability to life corning from his disabling alcoholism and the death of his soulmate Nellie. This poetry is the work of a hopeless man living in a lifeless world. In the strange transforming way that vulnerability permits, Riley wrote much of his kenotic poetry. Just as Jucklet wrote for the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD, and Amphine wrote for the Kokomo TRIBUNE, Spraivoll wrote for the Indianapolis JOURNAL which published over half of Riley's poetry and specifically the Benjamin Johnson of Boone series.

Kenotic poetry met the need Riley had sought since childhood to partic­ipate in the pure soul of art.

And yet it also gave him a new perspective that inspired special poetry.

Where was "home" in Riley's Nineteenth Century? Was "home" simply an adaptive shelter in a "tooth and claw" environment as the social Darwinists proposed? Riley evoked a more kenotic idea. He pictured a human situation though wrecked by vulnerability in which there was shelter with God, at a home not made by human hands, beyond time in God's real­ity. Here was no place where reality required struggle with reality. The kenotic idea of home was a place of rest from ambition and adaptive behav­ior. Riley wrote this poem:

WE MUST GET HOME (1881)

We must get home! How could we stray like this? -So far from home, we know not where it is, -Only in some fair, apple-blossomy place

Of children's faces - and the mother's face -We dimly dream it, till the vision clears

Even in the eyes of fancy, glad with tears.

We must get home -for we have been away So long. it seems forever and a day! And 0 so very homesick we have grown. The laughter of the world is like a moan In our tired hearing, and its songs as vain, -We must get home - we must get home again!

We must get home! With heart and soul we yearn

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We must get home - home to the simple things -The morning-glories twirling up the strings And bugling color, as they blared in blue - And-white o'er garden-gates we scampered through;

The long grape-arbor, with its undershade

Blue as the green and purple overlaid.

We must get home: All is so quiet there:

The touch of loving hands on brow and hair -Dim rooms, wherein the sunshine is made mild -The lost love of the mother and the child Restored in restful lullabies of rain. ‑

We must get home - we must get home again!

The rows of sweetcorn and the China beans Beyond the lettuce-beds where, towering, leans The giant sunflower in barbaric pride

Guarding the barn-door and the land outside; The honeysuckles, midst the hollyhocks, That clamber almost to the martin-box.

We must get home, where, as we nod and drowse,

Time humors us and tiptoes through the house,

And loves us best when sleeping baby-wise,

With dreams - not tear-drops - brimming our clenched eyes, -

From the author's Ora Myers glass negative collection of Hanock County, Indiana subjects.

SPRAIVOLL • 387

Pure dreams that know not taint nor earthly stain -We must get home - we must get home again!

We must get home! There only may we find The little playmates that we left behind, ‑

Some racing down the mad; some by the brook; Some droning at their desks, with wistful look Across the fields and orchards - further still Where laughs and weeps the old wheel at the mill.

Mowing the grass in Riley's era. From the author's Ora Myers glass negative

We must get home again - we must - we must! - collection of Hanock County, Indiana (Our rainy faces pelted in the dust)   subjects.

Creep hack from the vain quest through endless strife

To find not anywhere in all of life

A happier happiness than blest us then...

We must get home - we must get home again!

Riley's poetry began to attract more and more attention in America as his themes became more kenotic. His poems addressed what Cooke's Incarnation Methodism saw as "world chasm" in "modern life between the rich and the poor, the cultured and uncultured, the employer and the work­man. The gulf wider than the Atlantic that separates men in church, in busi­ness, in society, can never be bridged nor wide class antagonisms ever be reconciled till the higher descends to the lower in divine sympathy and

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Christlike compassion for humanity. There is no salvation, social or moral, in any city or nation where the Church of the democratic Christ has become an exclusive aristocracy, where the scholar, the culture, the refined, avoid the dens of ignorance, the haunts of vice, the gloomy alleys where poverty hides its rags, or refuses to shake the grimy hand of honest toil. The higher must touch the lower.

This to us is the meaning of the kenosis in the Incarnation. This is the method of Christ. By this method may society be redeemed and by this method may men be led as Farrar says to the larger life, as Virgil led Dante from the lower hells, in whose sulfurous air no angel ever plumed his wing to the bright lift of the stars and the shimmer of the sea."

Riley's poetry sought a medium whereby the "higher" might engage the "lower."

We have an imaginary encounter of Riley with himself as Benjamin F. Johnson, the most kenotic personas of Riley's pseudonyms. Only subtly do we come to realize that this persona, under whose published name appears "The Old Swimmin'-Hole" and "When the Frost is on the Punkin," is among his other attributes nothing less than Darwin's "ape." Ben Johnson at least has hair all over him like this "ape" from whose descent all folk of Riley's time reacted with horror. Riley in his subtlety and wit causes the very most despicable bogey-man of his Nineteenth Century time to become

the vehicle for his most kenotic poetry. Riley enjoyed this kind of wittiness.

The piece opens with Riley becoming introduced to Johnson's poetry through letters, the first of which revealingly said, "I make no doubt you will find some purty sad spots in my poetry, considerin'; but I hope you will bear iii mind that I am a great sufferer with rheumatizum, and have been, off and on, sence the cold New Years. In the main, however, I allus aim to write in a cheerful, comfortin' sperit, so's of the stuff hangs fire, and don't do no good, it hain't a-going to do no harm, - and them's my honest views on poet­ry.

It is on a later day when Riley claims he was feeling too gloomy and depressed to write, (and getting ready to get "wild"), that he claims Benjamin Johnson came to knock on his door. Riley echoes the Matthew 7.7 text where Jesus reminds us "Ask and it will be give to you, search and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. Everything anyone asks for gets received, or looks for gets found, or comes from knocking on a door for entry gets opened up."

"Come in!" (Riley) snarled, grabbing up my pencil and assuming a fright‑

SPRAIVOLL • 389

fully industrious air; "Come in!" ...

"Sir, howdy," said a low and pleasant voice. And at once, in spite of my perverse resolve, I looked up. I someway felt rebuked.

The speaker was very slowly, noiselessly closing the door. I could hard­ly face him when he turned around. An old man, of sixty-five, at least, but with a face and an eye of the most cheery and wholesome expression I had ever seen in either youth or age. Over his broad bronzed forehead and white hair he wore a low-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat, somewhat rusted now, and with the band grease-crusted, and the binding frayed at intervals and sagging from the threads that held it on. An old-styled frock coat of black, dull brown in streaks, and quite shiny about the collar and lapels. A waist-coat of no describable material or pattern, and a clean white shirt and collar of one piece, with a black string-tie and double bow, which would have been entirely concealed beneath the long white beard but for its having worked around to one side of the neck. The front outline of the face was cleanly shaven, and the beard, growing simply from the under chin and throat, lent the old pioneer the rather singular appearance of having hair all over him with the luxurious growth pulled out above his collar for mere sample.

I arose and asked the old man to sit down, handing him a chair deco­rously.

"No, no," he said - "I'm much obleeged. I hain't come in to bother you no more'n I can he'p. All I wanted was to know ef you got my poetry all right. You know I take yer paper," he went on, in an explanatory way, "and seein' you printed poetry in it once-in-a-while, I sent you some of mine -neighbors kindo' advised me to," he added apologetically, "and so I sent you some - two or three times I sent you some, but I hain't never seed hide-ner­hair of it in your paper, and as I wus I wus in town to-day, anyhow, I jest thought I'd kindo' drap in and git it back, ef you ain't goin' to print it -'cause I allus save up most the things I write, aimin' sometime to git 'em all struck off in pamphlet-form, to kindo distribit round `mongst the neighbors, don't you know."

The three poems by which Benjamin Johnson of Boone chose to intro­duce himself to the world as related by Riley in his prose piece, "A Caller from Boone" were "The Old Swimmin'-Hole," "The Hoss," and "When the Frost is on the Punkin'."

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THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE (1882)

OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything hut the eyes

Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;

But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,

And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,

Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide

That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,

It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress

My shadder sniilin' up at me with sich tenderness.

But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy-days

When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways, How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane, Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole They was lots o'fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.

There the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wounded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle

As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

SPRAIVOLL • 391

Oh! the old Swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, The scene was all changed, like the change in my face: The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and forgot. And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be -But never again will theyr shade shelter me!

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, And dive off in my grave like the old swinimin'-hole.

"The Old Swimmin'­Hole" is a poem which upholds the simple things as those things which make life really worth living: children, sunshine, a natur­al pool in a stream, the sight of wondrous and fantastic natural creatures freshly seen, a warm wind, friend­ship. The joy of life does not come from making oth­ers tremble. Nor is the great feeling of living coming from the proximity of assailing natural forces. The simple pleasure of companionship in natural bounty is enough to make life worth living.

Swimmin' holes were places of relaxation. In Indiana, there are few large bodies of water. The spot

Riley refers to was simply a deep and wide place in a small creek. Children were taught to swim by throwing them in the water over their heads. Girls were taught to be "afraid of the water" in those days. If they saw a minnow, tadpole, or -heaven forbid - a snake, they were expected to shriek and scream and head for the banks. Although the boys often wore no clothes at

The original "old Swimmin' Hole" on Greenfield. Indiana's Brandywine Creek. "The bridge of the railroad now covers the spot/Where the old divin' log lay sunk and forgot." Legend attributes the naming of this crick to three Revolutionary War veterans who stopped at its banks on their way to seek homes. They likened it to the Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania where they had fought with General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. The settlers in the area decided to honor their recollection with the name.

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all, the men wore bathing suits resembling light-weight baseball outfits and women wore gathered tunics over bloomers.

Riley's poetry such as the humble "The Old Swimmin'- Hole" burst into an age of social Darwinism where persons were not to be seen as children at play. Nor were persons to be conceived as having any role outside each's function. The concept of "function" was key in social Darwinism which Riley's kenoticism opposed so vehemently. Persons were said to be func­tional aspects of society whose roles, natures and activities were a part of the mutual dependence of an "organism" (likened to a biological organism in evolution) of the society in which the person lived. This was the doctrine of "Society as an Organism," in Herbert Spencer's PRINCIPLES OF SOCI­OLOGY. Riley suggested that a person was of the character of a child of God in a memory of innocence, a kenotic idea.

In another Riley poem, "Ike Walton's Prayer," a man prays not for gold and jewels, and lands and livestock, but for a humble home with a woman who would make the place a home in love. He prays not for riches, estates or castle halls, but for simple things: children, sunshine, gentle breeze, fra­grance of blossoms and songs of birds. The vision is also in opposition to that of the social Darwinist who saw persons as biologically evolving forms seeking maintenance levels of existence.

There is a recollection of Tolbert F. Reavis, a visitor to Riley from Missouri, that sheds some light on the character of Benj. Johnson of Boone.

Reavis was traveling through Indianapolis on a warm September after­noon in 1911 and, though a stranger, decided to visit with Riley at his home on Lockerbie Street. Reavis was admitted and ushered in to a large old-fash­ioned drawing room where Riley sat on a comfortable arm-chair crossed in a grey suit and clean shaven. Riley greeted him cordially and asked him to be seated. After "small talk" about where the man lived (Missouri), Reavis told him he admired his work and asked him about several poems. Most of them turned out to be poems that Riley said were from "Old Ben Johnson of Boone." Riley explained the man's character as "opinionated, hard headed old farmer with a lot of good horse sense, and a man who admired natures and had great respect for the propriety of things."

The horse was a most admirable creature to Benjamin Johnson of Boone. I should add that the "hoss" was not an object of admiration to Riley. In reality he became deathly afraid of them.

SPRAIVOLL • 393

THE HOSS (1882)

The boss he is a splendud beast;

He is man's friend, as heaven designed,

And, search the world from west to east,

No honester you'll ever find.

Some calls the hoss 'a pore dumb brute,' And yit,

like Him who died fer you, I say, as I theyr charge refute,

'Fergive; they know not what they do!'

No wiser animal makes tracks

Upon these earthly shores, and hence Arose the axium, true as facts,

Extoled by al, as 'Good hoss-sense!'

The hoss is strong, and knows his stren'th, -You hitch him up a time er two

And last him, and he'll go his en'th

And kick the dashboard out fer you!

He'll paw and prance to bear your praise.

Because he's learnt to love you well; And, though you can't tell what he says,

He'll nicker all he wants to tell.

He knows you when you slam the gate
At early dawn, upon your way

394 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

Unto the barn, and snorts elate. To git his corn, er oats, er hay.

He knows you, as the orphant knows

The folks that loves her like theyr own

And raises her and "finds" her clothes,

And "schools" her tel a womern-grown!

I claim no hoss will harm a man, Ner kick, tier run away, cavort,

Stump-suck, er balk, er 'catamaran,' El you'll jest treat him as you ort.

But when I see the beast abused,

And clubbed around as I've saw some, I want to see his owner noosed,

And jest yanked up like Absolum! Of course they's differunce in stock, -A hoss that has a little yeer,

And slender build, and shaller hock, Can beat his shadder, mighty near!

Whilse one that's thick in neck and chist

And big in leg and full in flank, That tries to race, I still insist

He'll have to take the second rank.

And I have jest laid back and laughed,

And rolled and wallered in the grass At fairs, to see some heavy-draft

Lead out at first, yit come in last!

Each hoss has his appinted place, ‑

The heavy hoss should plow the soil; ‑

The blooded racer, he must race

And win big wages fer his toil.

I never bet - ner never wrought

Children at barn with dog litter and cats. From the author's Ora Myers glass negative collection of Hanock County, Indiana sub­jects.

SPRAIVOLL • 395

Upon my feller man to bet -And yit, at times, I've often thought Of my convictions with regret.

I bless the hoss from hoof to head -From head to hoof, and tale to man! -I bless the hoss, as I have said,

From head to hoof, and back again!

I love my God the first of all,

Then Him that perished on the cross, And next, my wife, - and then I fall Down on my knees and love the hoss.

Riley posed that Benjamin Johnson had his own set of values and central interests and one of his main ones was his "hoss."

The third of the three poems is probably the one I have seen most anthologized into selected verses of the Nineteenth century of James Whitcomb Riley's poems.

It is the third of the Benjamin Johnson poems that Riley chooses to include in his introduction to the series in "A Caller from Boone." Ben Johnson's letter accompanying the poem states it was "wrote off on the finest Autumn day I ever

laid eyes on! I never felt better in my life. The morning air was as invigo­ratin' as bitters with tanzy in it, and the folks at breakfast said they never saw such a' appetite on mortal man before. Then I lit out for the barn, and after feedin', I come back and tuck my pen and ink out on the porch, and jest cut loose. I writ and writ till my fingers was that cramped I couldn't hardly let go of the penholder. And the poem I send you is the upshot of it all. Ef you don't find it cheerful enough fer your columns, I'll have to knock under, that's all!"

Angels cannot beat him into delirium to steal his mind. Instead he will invite them to a harvest setting on a rural farm in "When the Frost Is On the Punkin."

A "turn of the century" (Nineteenth) illustration of the setting of "When the Frost Is on the Punkin.** Illustrator R.J. Campbell.

396 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN (1882)

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock', And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock And the clackin' of the guineys², and the cluckin' of the hens,2 And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; 0, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here -Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock -When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn: The stubble in the furries - kindo' lonesome-like, but still A-preachin' sermons to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The ^posses in theyr stalls below - the clover overhead! - 0, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin"s over, and your wimmern-folks is through With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ...

I don't know how to tell it - but of sick a thing could be

As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me-I'd want to 'commodate 'em - all the whole-indurin' flock -When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

SPRAIVOLL • 397

I. In the fall, corn cut by hand was bundled with ears in the air to dry prior to husking and hauling to a corncrib for storage. The stalks, when dry, would be chopped and fed to live­stock during the winter months.

2. Many farmers in frontier days considered guineas to be "watchdogs." When a stranger turned in the lane the guineas set up a tremendous howl in high pitched, loud babble.

The kenotic content of this poem is the proposal that the earthly state of Christ permits communication with the human properties of God. A person does not need to be divine to participate in the ultimate life of humanity. What the reality of the human condition encounters is also what God encounters and sanctifies. God like the persona of the poem will appreciate the experience and satisfaction that a harvest has proven successful to the mid-western American farmer. The Incarnation of Christ through kenosis has opened up the possibility of ultimate satisfactions in simple human achievements and work goals. Working through the summer and getting the crops in entitles one to have human satisfaction in all of nature because doing this is a sanctified human need that Christ would warrant participat­ing in the human condition.

There is satisfaction in life expressed here. The farmer has not merely participated in a struggle for existence. He has happiness that he is a human being. He likens it to position where contact with God would be warranted. He is not in a phase of life. He lives in a state of ecstatic dialogue with a human God.

The writings of James Whitcomb Riley are very often Protestant Christian in spirit and subject matter. Sometimes the themes of this thrust are misunderstood as platitudes or sentimentalism. This is not the case and those who think so miss the point entirely about not only the writings of James Whitcomb Riley but also his age.

Riley's poetry became his century's "best sellers" starting with his first book, "The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems" first published in July, 1883.

A typical Riley poem from this little but &q