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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 15

BOOKMARK FOR RILEY FAMILY POETRY
BOOKMARK FOR LONGFELLOW AND OTHER POETS WHO INFLUENCED RILEY
BOOKMARK FOR A PARTIAL LIST OF PUBLISHED HOOSIER POETS OF THE POST CIVIL WAR ERA

SPRAIVOLL • 425

They mock Him with a robe of state,

And crown Him with a crown of thorns.

'Tis noonday, and the Christ condemned To bleed and perish on the tree; Yet angels do their Lord attend ‑

Sinner, He died for you and me!

While on the cross the Savior hung, The pall of night at noonday spread,

The quaking earth with anguish wrung, The bursting tombs gave up their dead.

The veil was rent, the lightnings fell. From out the darkness hear the cry

Of Him who conquered Death and Hell. "Eloi Lama Sabachthani."

The tomb receives His mangled corpse -They set the seals, and Roman guard;

With taunting jeer, and muttered curse,

The tomb is sealed, and watched, and barred.

Yet at the promised morning's dawn

The seals were loosed, the guardsmen fell: He 'rose, triumphant marching on,

In chains led captive Death and Hell.

The trembling earth, the bursting tomb, And songs of saints and seraphim Proclaim the risen Lord has come;

The world shall bow and worship Him.

As He ascends from earth above To Heaven, our promised home,

In trusting faith we live, and love, Our risen Lord again will come.

426 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

The poem is an artful account of the crucifixion united initially by anaphora, the droning and heavy repeti­tion of the "'Tis" constructs. The poem bears a familiar meter to much of the son's poetry and is thematically consistent. It also sounds close to the hymn, "'Tis Midnight and On Olive's

Brow." Frontier poetry never got far away from the

thoughts of hymns. Reuben's poetry was of the newspaper variety as was the early poetry of James Whitcomb Riley. We do not know much of it because the early newspapers the father wrote for were not so well preserved as those bearing the son's poetry.

We can trace the appearance of James Whitcomb Riley's writings back through time to the first newspaper pieces Riley published.

Riley was first a newspaper poet as was his father.

The custom of printing poetry on the front pages of newspapers ended probably in the 1880's in Indiana but not before Riley had mastered the form and found great success in it. The "Jay Whit" poetry - an early pseudonymn of Riley's- in the Indianapolis Saturday MIRROR is the first. There were four poems in this group. The first of them was mistakenly published as a poem of "Jay White" instead of "Jay Whit" as Riley intended. The others were correctly attributed to "Jay Whit." They included "Man's Devotion," March 30, 1872, "A Mockery," April 13, 1872; "Flames and Ashes," April 20th, 1872; and "Johnny" May 25th, 1872. Riley also sent the MIRROR "A Ballad/With a Serious Conclusion" which was published anonymously on May 11th, 1872.

His greatest pre-kenotic poetry and prose was published in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD as early as June 1875. His first contribution was under the old pen name, "Jay Whit," and was entitled "Red Riding-Hood." Occasional poems were sent to the Saturday HERALD in late 1877 and then began Riley's major work, the Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club (Numbers 1 through 6). No. 1 was published, May 11, 1878; No. 2 was published June 15, 1878; No. 3 was published July 6, 1878; No. 4 was

A newspaper press of Riley's era. The Hancock DEMOCRAT pub­lished in Greenfield. Indiana.

SPRAIVOLL • 427

published August 24, 1878; No. 5 was published September 28, 1878: and the final installment, No. 6, was published November 16th, 1878. Riley wrote about the "Flying Islands," which was his long autobiographical and narrative "astronomical play/poem" in the September 14th Issue. Riley then contributed occasional poetry to the Herald during 1879 and one poem in 1880. A series of "Robert Burns" inspired poetry appeared in this paper from Riley in 1885.

The No. 4 of the Respectfully Declined Papers has proven to be the most important of Riley's submissions to the HERALD. In this issue was Riley's original composition of "Flying Islands of the Night."

The poetry submitted to the HERALD is Riley at his most rebelliousness. Where did this come from? In my epoch, psychologist's play with such questions as the relationship of age within a child's birth order to receptivi­ty to original ideas. They conclude those born later than other siblings tend to be ideologically rebellious rather than accept dominant theoretical posi­tions. Since I have often posed social Darwinism as Riley's foil, it is inter­esting to enquire where both Riley and Darwin were in birth order. Riley and Darwin were later-borns. Darwin's evolutionary theory required opposition to the strong and pervading nineteenth-century belief in the biblical story of creation. Riley's kenotic poetry required opposition to the scientific bio­logical truth that evolutionary theory rendered impossible or unlikely a human God.

RILEY FAMILY POETRY

Long before Riley became famous, his family wrote poetry which confirms that poetry was a common form of expression within Riley's family.

Cornelia Loder who lived with the Riley's while teaching in the Greenfield schools in 1877 kept an autograph album. She sought entries from the Rileys and their guests. Here are little poems written by the Riley family from

The children of the Riley family. Left to right: John, Mary. Elva. Hum. Standing: the poet. (From Julia Wilson Riley photograph album. Courtesy of The Riley Old Home Society. Greenfield. Indiana.)

428 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

that album. Reuben Riley wrote,

If, through life's eventful race,

Our duties be well done,

He'll still vouchsafe His grace,

And Angels guard us home.

June llth, 1877

Ms. Loder recalls "Cap" Riley, as he was sometimes called, was a lawyer with considerable oratorical skills from a platform but not much of a money­maker. Her opinion was that he was too upright a man to engage in more lucrative activities of legal practitioners. She says that the home was not at all poverty ridden. The Rileys had not only a respectable home but all of the common advantages available to a respectable small-town family. In appearance, Reuben Riley bore a remarkable likeness to John Wilkes Booth. He told Ms. Loder that after the assassination of President Lincoln he once had barely escaped arrest because of this resemblance. Ms. Loder also remembered the stepmother as being patient and kind. Her role of foster mother was difficult but she filled it "efficiently and the children usually were respectful of her." Her Quaker "thee" and "thou" and various other old fashioned ways of speech and manner contrasted strangely with the joyous humanity of the first Mrs. Riley. When she lived at the home, the children still grieved keenly for Elizabeth Riley. As her entry in the autograph album, the stepmother, Martha Lukens Riley wrote:

To Cornelia

This little emblem of respect

I gave my valued friend to thee

Treat not its motto with neglect

it is dear girl remember me.

But say if Heaven should early doom

For all is just by His decree,

My bosom to the silent tomb,

Wilt thou drop one tear for me

June 7th, 1877 Thy True friend, Mattie C. Riley.

Cornelia Loder depicts the Riley children in the household as an active, happy group, mingling freely in the normal social life of the town. The youngest Riley son, wrote his name "Hum Riley" in the album with many decorative elaborations. Riley had begun teaching his younger brother such flourishes as he was passing on his sign painting art to him.

Elva's entry in the 1877 album read, In the dimly outlined vista of the

SPRAIVOLL • 429

future when alone In a mood of retrospection, you let your memory road, You must not forget Old Greenfield, and the Castle in the grove. You Will not forget the "romance," you must not forget the love (Editor's note, the reference here is to a boyfriend of Cornelia's) of the many friends you left there, but keep in memories store One bud of recollection if you can keep no more. The Will in the fourth line was a play on a young man's name. Elva signed herself as "La fille du chateau."

Mary, at twelve, wrote:

I'm small I know, but then I may

Make some noise in this world of ours.

My compliments to you I give

As plentifully as this day's showers

Come down from out the weeping skies.

Mary was the last survivor of the Riley family and lived until 1936.

From this album one definitely con­cludes the entire Riley family was used to rhyme and each could express him­self or herself in it. Riley made no con­tribution in this album because it was circulated in the Spring of 1877 when Riley had gone to Anderson to work for the newspaper, the Anderson

Democrat.

LONGFELLOW AND OTHER
POETS WHO INFLUENCED RILEY

We have often commented on Riley 's early love of Longfellow to whom Riley composed several poems. In one of his letters, Riley says of Longfellow, "The poetry of Longfellow is artless and subdued and very tender, yet deep as the love, the hope of any human heart, is deep." Only after his

thirties, does Riley find his own confident vision of the spirit of his age. Longfellow then seems less relevant to American poetry to Riley.

Riley looked to Longfellow in his twenties for encouragement. The inci‑

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882. Riley was much encouraged by Longfellow's early praise but modified the Longfellow style in the late 1870's to write uniquely American kenotic poetry. Nevertheless. Riley said of him. "Longfellow is my poetic Bible," and "His is the sweetest human mind that ever existed."

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dent is one recorded in every biography of Riley and is substantially as follows:

In the fall of 1876, Riley sent a small sheaf of his poems to Longfellow asking for criticism and suggestions. The were "Destiny," "If I Knew What Poets Know" and "The Iron Horse." Longfellow's reply, dated at Cambridge on November 30, arrived in Greenfield on December 5. Riley was delighted, we know, from a firsthand report by the boarder Cornelia Loder: "He came into the hall waving a letter to Elva. his sister, and saying, 'Some day you will be proud to be called the sister of the Hoosier Poet.'" Longfellow had taken the pains to criticize one of the poems, "Destiny", pointing out Riley's inexact use of the word, "prone." The word means "face downward", Longfellow explained, and Riley should have used "supine." But more important still, Longfellow had written that Riley's work showed "true poetic faculty and insight."

From this contact by letter in 1876, many have come to call Riley the stu­dent of Longfellow and his early years "Riley's Longfellow Period." This biographer believes Riley's poetry grows out of frontier song and doggerel and takes its schema and inspiration more directly from the influence of Dickens. Great study of many poets, Longfellow among them, no doubt influenced Riley.

Nevertheless we must examine Riley's relationship with Longfellow carefully because Riley's love of Longfellow was very intensive from Riley's earliest days. We have further information from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, the grandson who has written about his grandfather and Riley:

RILEY AND LONGFELLOW CONNECTIONS

"When Longfellow went abroad in 1868-1869, Riley, as a 19-year-old youth, followed the poet's travelings in the Greenfield COMMERCIAL. When the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, came to America, Longfellow described how "erect the rapt musician stood." And when Ole Bull played at the Academy of Music in Indianapolis on April 16, 1872, Riley in turn cried: "Why, it was music the way he stood!"

When an editor paid Longfellow $3,000 in 1874 for "The Hanging of the Crane," some jealous would-be writer said the poem was "flapdoodle." But Riley defended Longfellow, quoting the lines in which he had described the azure eyes of children:

"Limpid as planets that emerge

Above the ocean's rounded verge,

SPRAIVOLL • 431

Soft shining through the summer night!"

From Longfellow's "Morituri Salutamus" of the next year, 1875, Riley is said to have gleaned the key for his own life:

"Study yourself and most of all note well

Wherein kind nature meant you to excel."

In his popular lectures, Riley gladly paid a fine tribute to Longfellow:

"The happiest forms of poetic expression are cast in simplest phraseolo­gy and seeming artlessness...Longfellow has furnished many notable exam­ples, first among which I would class the poem, "The Day is Done." It is like resting to read it. It is like bending with uncovered head beneath the silent

benediction of the stars."

In much the mood of Longfellow's "The Day is Done," Riley wrote his own poem, "In the Dark," especially when we include the three final stan­zas of the original version.

It was this poem, the original manuscript version of "In the Dark," togeth­er with "A Destiny" (later called "The Dreamer") which he had published in HEARTH AND HOME for April 10, 1875, and one or two other manuscript and printed poems that Riley decided to send to Longfellow in order to get his opinion of them. This was a crisis in his life and he turned to Longfellow as the one person whose help he most needed. If only Longfellow would give a word of approval he would have decided to devote the rest of his life to literature.

Accordingly with some trepidation, on Nov. 27, 1876, James Whitcomb Riley, then 27 years old, sent to Longfellow, then nearly 70, a letter in which he said:

"I find the courage to address you as I would a friend since by your works you have proven yourself a friend to the world: I would not, however, intrude upon you now, did I not feel that you alone could assist me."

Almost immediately upon receiving the letter "there was really no (10 days suspense") Longfellow wrote to Riley on Nov. 30, 1876, saying of the poems which he had sent him:

"I have read them with great pleasure, and think they show the true poet­ic faculty and insight."

As soon as this letter reached the post office at Greenfield and Riley found it there and opened it, he was, as he said "in a perfect hurricane of delight." He walked not through the streets of Greenfield but through some enchanted city, where the pavements were of air; where all the rough sounds of a stirring town were softened into gentle music; where everything was

432 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

happy; where there was no distance and no time."

Two years later, on Sept. 2, 1878, Riley wrote to Longfellow expressing to him "my warmest thanks" for the great good your influence and kindness have done me."

This time he enclosed a long poetical drama, "The Flying Islands of the Night," and a number of other poems.

Again, Longfellow replied promptly, on Sept. 5, 1878:

"I have received the poems you were kind enough to send me, and have read the lyric pieces with much pleasure...Among these poems the one that pleased me as much as any, if not more than any, was "The Iron Horse!"

It was interesting that the poem Longfellow selected for particular praise is one in which the poet of the Middle West exalted above any "Arab steed" the locomotives and their trains which were making Indianapolis one of the great railroad centers of the country.

Once more Longfellow's encouragement helped Riley, and who may deny that the faith the younger poet had in him, unlike the earlier harsh crit­icisms of Poe, gave Longfellow in turn a new lease on life so that much of his best and apparently effortless verse was written during the few remain­ing years.

A few years afterwards, on Dec. 31, 1881, less than three months before Longfellow's death, the Indiana poet came to make a personal visit on the New England poet at the Craigie House in Cambridge. That evening, New Year's Eve, Riley wrote:

"Just think o' me a-shakin' hands with Longfellow -which I did this very afternoon. I was advised not to go -that he was ill, and was not permitted by his physicians to see anyone, but I went, in the old spirit of desperation that is a good thing to have sometimes. I shan't try to tell you anything of his home - the house he lives in - but I knew it when in sight, and hurried on and up to it and rang the bell. (There's an old-fashioned brass knocker, highly polished, still set in the middle of the door.) The bell is at the side, and hard to find. The plain-looking woman that answered it said that Mr. Longfellow was not permitted to see anyone. And I asked her at least to present my card, on which I had written that Jas. W. Riley, of Indiana, wanted to offer his respects, if entirely agreeable, &c. There was some little delay- but, in the language of the tree toad, "I fetched him! 0, I fetch him!" - And he seemed actually delighted, and pranced around and showed off his study and the famous Washington Room & all. Lord! What a lovable old man he is! He very highly commended some views I expressed regarding the higher worth

SPRAIVOLL • 433

of dialect, and clapped his hands over the "Old-fashioned Roses" which I repeated in illustration of the real purity and sweetness which might be found in the Hoosier idiom. I can't begin to tell you the great interest he expressed - and encouraging me again and again. I told him he was the first real poet who offered me encouragement of any kind - and in reply he said he was glad he did, and now could most heartily offer the same again, and more of it."

The Next Day, New Year's Day, 1882, in writing to his first publisher about his visit on the previous afternoon to Longfellow, he added:

"He was very, very gracious, and complimented me beyond all hope of expression. Can't tell you anything now, wait till I return, with the laurel on me brow.-

Five days later he wrote to another friend:

"Have grappled hands with Longfellow, and he admitted me despite physician's orders, and likes me and says it."

Eleven weeks later came Longfellow's death. This was a great blow to Riley. The next month he wrote for the Indianapolis JOURNAL of April 29, 1882, an article called "An Hour With Longfellow," in which he gave a fur­ther account of his conversation with him:

"His talk, although varied, was mainly of our native poets and their work. He knew them all - even the humblest. And it was a surprise to us to find him well acquainted with even the local characteristics and dialects of the West. His theme gradually deepened into graver and more serious channels and he spoke of the higher mission of poetry - its kinship with all the purer emotions and aspirations of the human heart - and I remember as, with growing fervor, his fascinating topic swept him on he broke abruptly, say­ing: "But the idea grows too fragile for the touch of analysis - the thought loses all palpable embodiment and is veiled and almost lost in the midst of its own spiritual loveliness."

In January, 1883, some nine months after Longfellow's death, Riley was able to come again to Cambridge and visited the grave of Longfellow on top of Indian Ridge in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Like the author of "The Children's Hour," Riley himself was to enter into the "Child World" and it was appropriate that on this occasion he brought with him a group of chil­dren bearing roses to lay on Longfellow's tomb. Of this event he wrote a poem, which has heretofore only been published in part, but which is here printed apparently for the first time in its entirety:

434 • THE POET As FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

THE POET AND THE CHILDREN
AT THE GRAVE OF LONGFELLOW

Because that he loved the children, If for nothing else, we would say This is a grand old poet

Who is sleeping here today. Awake, he loved their voices,

And wove them into his rhyme; And the music of their laughter

Was with him all the time.

Kindly, and warm and tender,

He nestled each childish palm

So close in his own that his touch was a prayer, And his speech a blessed psalm.

Though he knew the tongues of nations

And their meanings all were dear, The prattle and lisp of a little child

Was the sweetest for him to hear.

He has turned from the marvelous pages, Of many an alien tone ‑

Haply come down from Olivet,

Or out through the gates of Rome, -

Set sail o'er the seas between him

And each little beckoning hand That fluttered about the meadows

And groves of his native land -

Fluttered and flashed on his vision,

As, in the glimmering light

Of the orchard lands of his childhood, The blossoms of pink and white

SPRAIVOLL • 435

"That was because, 0 Children,

Ye might not always be

The same that the Saviour's arms were wound About in Galilee."

So because that he loved the children, If for nothing else, we would say This is a grand old poet

Who is sleeping here today. ...

At the time of Riley's visit, Longfellow had said to him, "We are all of one common family." Both poets were strong believers in democracy. For both there was no rich nor poor, nor high nor low, in poetry. In a sonnet called "Possibilities," Longfellow had raised the question: "Where are the poets?" and had said:

"Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught, In schools, some graduate of the field or street, Who shall become a master of the art."

Such lines appealed to the young poet, who had not had the advantage -or was it a disadvantage? - of university training, and to none more than

436 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

James Whitcomb Riley. He, in turn, loved to point to Longfellow as an example of "the art to conceal art." To a friend who was struggling to com­pose poetry, Riley wrote:

"One of the finest attributes of poetry-making is to conceal all effort. It can he done. Read any master to find that out. Longfellow above them all. He writes with the most painstaking care and slowness, and yet his verse all seems as though it made itself. There's the art of it."

Again he wrote:

"Study Longfellow, and be artless and subdued and very tender - yet deep as the love - the hope of any human heart is deep."

Ten years after Longfellow's death, Riley published in 1892 his sonnet called "Longfellow;" beginning:

"The winds have talked with him confidingly; The trees have whispered to him; and the night Hath held him gently as a mother might, And taught him all sad tones of melody."

In 1907, the centennial of Longfellow's birth was celebrated...At that time Riley wrote a sonnet called, "Longfellow; 1807 - February 27 - 1907."

wiA"t;':n

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Two Riley hand-drawn Christmas cards sent to his teacher Lee 0. Harris. (From the Barton Rees Pogue glass positive collection.)

SPRAIVOLL • 437

This began:

"0 gentlest kinsman of humanity!

Thy love hath touched all hearts, even as thy song Hath touched all chords of music that belong

To the quavering heaven-strung harp of harmony."

From this time onward until his death in the house on Lockerbie Street in Indianapolis on July 22, 1916, James Whitcomb Riley himself had come to hold as a poet something of the position in the hearts of the common peo­ple of America that Longfellow held before him."

One of Riley's legacies from Longfellow is his range of stanza patterns including couplets, triplets, simple quatrains and ballad meters, the varied patterns of the ode and the elegy, sonnets, and blank verse. Longfellow was a marvellous poetic craftsman. However, Longfellow's poetry echoes artis­tic sensibility rather than Riley's musical ethos. We find this difference stat­ed in Longfellow's own writings. In "The Singers," Longfellow gave poet­ry a threefold purpose: to charm, to strengthen and to teach. He wrote in "Michael Angelo: "Art is the gift of God, and must be used \Unto His glory. That in art is highest\ Which aims at this." Longfellow and Riley shared a fast brotherhood of moral concern. Like Longfellow. Riley was beholden to the past; but while the past inspired Longfellow to piety and a desire to pre­serve out of it what was lovely and good, Riley used the past as a field where innocence exists and hope in a redeeming God of humility survives. By way of national reputation, I would say that Riley and Longfellow each become identified with the Nineteenth Century as no other poets did, first Longfellow, then Riley.

Riley apprenticed to Lee 0. Harris in poetics. One finds Harris as a pri­mary influence. Riley wrote a poem to him entitled, "Master and First Song-Friend - Lee 0. Harris."

Before we dismiss Lee 0. Harris as merely Riley's teacher, we should be made aware that Harris made himself into a great disseminator of knowl­edge generally throughout the country. In the 1880's and until his death, he was the editor of "Home and School Visitor." Greenfield was its place of publication. The magazine was begun in Jan. 1881 and published for many years by D.H. Goble or by the later D.H. Goble Publishing Co. for distrib­ution to township schools - mostly "one room" -dotting the countryside neighborhoods of Indiana and many other Western states. The growth of the

438 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

-Visitor" under Harris's editorial supervision was phenomenal. By May, 1886, its edition states, "We cannot give a better idea of (the "Visitor's") growth than by stating that for the three years past the number used in schools was 5,000, 10,500 and 18,000 respectively." Greenfield's little pub­lication came to be used by schools all over the Midwestern United States. One of its editions claims its use "in every state and territory and in many foreign countries." That same edition claimed a publication of 22,000 per month so it must have become very widely dispersed. "Home and School Visitor" was originally published by a Hancock County School Superintendent whose name was Aaron Pope and Captain Lee 0. Harris, Riley's teacher who was by now the Greenfield Principal of Schools. Aaron Pope was a tragic but brilliant man who died at the age of thirty-seven. Professor Pope (as he was called) had been a teacher in several township schools and also at the McCordsville graded school before becoming Hancock County School Superintendent. He died of a heart attack in June, 1882 shortly after the publication started and the enterprise was sold to D.H. Goble, then a Greenfield implement dealer who undertook its publication using the good offices of Lee 0. Harris as Editor. The first format of "Home and School Visitor" was like a newspaper with advertising. It then took the form of a magazine. The first issue contains the news that electric lights had been introduced on Wall Street in New York. There are many poems, some for memorizing, many stories, with those for the lower one room school grades in larger print, "natural history" or what we would call science, sto­ries about historic figures, "how to" articles explaining how common prod­ucts were produced, current events, and other subject matter.

Will H. Glasscock, an early historian of Greenfield, wrote a book called YOUNG FOLK OF INDIANA in which he included Lee 0. Harris under the caption "History, Story and Song." In describing Harris's youth, Glasscock wrote: "His ear was ever close to Nature's heart and he heard and felt its beatings in harmony with the promptings of his own life and soul." Among Harris's writings is a novel about a hobo called, THE MAN WHO TRAMPS, and a volume of poetry entitled INTERLUDES. Few remember that Riley himself did the artwork for Harris's novel. A letter from Riley to Harris at the James Whitcomb Riley Museum in Greenfield, Indiana con­firms this revelation.

It might be well to examine one of Harris's own compositions to note Harris's poetic style. His poem, "Song of the Rain," was on the front page of the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD of January 26, 1878.

SPRAIVOLL • 439

SONG OF THE RAIN

Where folded about by the shadows, My spirit is nursing its pain.

I sit all alone in the darkness,

And list to the song of the rain.

And often I hear in its music The patter of feet that are still; And then I forget for a moment. The mound on yon desolate hill.

And, thrilled with the bliss of her presence, My heart leaps to welcome its guest; I open my arms to receive her,

And clasp only grief to my breast.

I wrap myself up in the shadows That woe o'er my spirit has spread, And moan all alone in the darkness And weep with the rain for my dead.

But now, as I hear at my window The touch of those fingers so light, That weave in the warp of the silence The woof of their music to-night,

So sweet is the sound and so restful The charm which its melody brings, That sorrow has folded her pinions To listen while memory sings.

And all that my heart has been dreaming The rain in its music repeats,

While thoughts that like bees have been roaming Come bearing their burden of sweets.

New hope. like a carrier pigeon,

440 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

Though weary and torn by the blast, Escaping the snare of the fowler, Flies home with her message at last.

Now faith paints the bow of her promise On tear-drops that sorrow has shed,

Arid love is beguiled from her mourning. And turns from the grave of her dead.

And thus, as I list to the fingers That harp on my window to-night,

I look through the gloom and the darkness With filial in the dawning of light.

In point of comparison of teacher (Harris) to student (Riley), I juxtapose Riley's "The Rain," published in the same newspaper, the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD in the next year on July 12, 1879:

THE RAIN

The rain sounds like a laugh to me ‑

A low laugh poured out Rapidly.

My very soul smiles as I listen to

The low, mysterious laughter of the rain, Poured musically over heart and brain

Till weary care, soaked with it through and through, Sinks; and, with wings wet with it as with dew, My spirit flutters up, with every stain Washed from its plumage, and as white again As when the old laugh of the rain was new. Then laugh on, happy rain; laugh louder yet; Laugh out in torrent-bursts of watery mirth; Unlock thy lips of purple cloud and let Thy liquid merriment baptize the earth, Arid wash the sad face of the world, and set The universe to music dripping-wet.

Just as the Harris poem was really not about the rain. but about the death

SPRAIVOLL • 441

of a young woman, so is the Riley poem really not about rain either. Riley does not however take an unrelated tack about the fact of rain. He looks to its own essence. Rain falls to permit growth and creation to be sustained. This seems to Riley a thing like laughter: a spontaneous and life-affirming activity, favorable to life itself. The rain is, in this sense, "happy rain." Since rain has this role of revival, let it also be thought of as "baptizer," Riley sug­gests. The drift of Riley's mind is toward the essential and ultimate. A world of meaninglessness, anxiety, depression, fate, and death finds simple rain as challenger. The humble rain changes the drift of life to the direction of sur­vival and comfort. While the thought is really rather humorous in any kind of overall scheme of things, nevertheless, how about a universe set to music "dripping wet?" Riley suggests. This catachresis takes the function of rain far beyond any simple possibility one might imagine and so serves to take the poem into the realm of its true subject: the rejuvenation of the world through simple acceptance of humble life situation, a kenotic idea. We have here not just an echo of literary figure of speech as in such usages as "to take arms against a sea of troubles." Instead we have a poem of a simple subject, rendered essential, thematic and finally, and this is most important, a point of salvation. The difference between the poetry of the teacher (Harris) and student (Riley) is dramatic.

Many other early poets influenced Riley. Riley wrote poems of acknowl­edgment to Robert Herrick, John Greenleaf Whittier and also Alfred Lord Tennyson. Riley's first poem, "A Backward Look," that we still have was published in 1870 under the nom de plume "Edyrn," the name of a very minor knight in "Geriant and Enid" in Tennyson's IDYLS OF THE KING. This first poem was published in the newspaper, the Greenfield COMMER­CIAL, at an unknown date and one of its original stanzas read:

They got me to climb for the bluebird's nest By telling me they'd give me half the eggs, And I got to the linib by tuggin' my best

And fell to the ground and broke one of my legs.

As most of Riley's poems, great revisions occurred as the poems were printed, republished and reprinted.

Dickens is noticeable although not as a poet. In fact, Riley doesn't try to hide this influence at all. One of his great poems of the "Poetical Gymnastics" series is simply titled, "God Bless Us Every One" in the

442 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD published July 26, 1879. We know its ori­gin as a saying of the crippled child, "Tiny Tim" in Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL,

GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE (1879)

God bless us every one!!! prayed Tiny Tim ‑

Crippled and dwarfed of body, yet so tall Of soul we tiptoe earth to look on him

High towering over all.

He loved the loveless world, nor dreamed, indeed, That it. at best, could give to him the while But pitying glances, when his only need

Was but a cheery smile.

And thus he prayed, "God bless us every one," ‑

Condensing all the creeds within the span Of his child-heart; and so, despising none,

Was nearer saint than man.

I like to fancy God in Paradise,

Lifting a finger o'er the rhythmic swing Of chiming harp and song, with eager eyes Turned earthward, listening. -

The anthem stilled -the angels leaning there Above the golden walls - the morning sun

Gustave Dore' Engraving of

Of Christmas bursting flower-like with the prayer, - Dickens' "Christmas Carol" (1861).

"God bless us every one."

Riley chose to open his 1895 volume of SKETCHES IN PROSE AND OCCASIONAL VERSES with "God Bless Us Every One." He really saw himself in "Tiny Tim." His alcoholism was as disabling as Tiny Tim's. To Riley, God listens when one says in a seemingly loveless world, "God Bless us Every One!" I note that Riley often closed his dedicatory addresses and public functionary appearances with this benediction.

Riley acknowledged his appreciation of many poets by poetry. For John

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Keats, Riley wrote "A Ditty of No Tone." calling Keats' poetry "sun-washed" (natural, evocative of nature) and "luxurious in rhyme." Something which captures fragrance of wild flowers, drone bee "flight", shower and sunshine. In one of his letters Riley states "Keats knew of the nectar of his language."

Riley's love of Robert Burns is referenced elsewhere. A poem to Burns is "As We Read." Riley says Burns was a poet who "outheld his hands lov­ingly to his people in dreams of sweet pathos and "sweet" themes."

Riley eulogized Ralph Waldo Emerson as one who "drew" to the princi­ples he acclaimed and held a "simple faith" in the direction of the voyage of life

Riley was born on Edgar Allan Poe's date of death and he always felt a special presence of Poe. In fact, Poe, indirectly brought him initial fame. William Lyon Phelps, Yale's English Professor who knew Riley intimately commented, "His immense admiration for Poe's genius was tempered by his regret over Poe's pessimism."

William Cullen Bryant inspired a Riley poem. Riley said his poetry was like music in "clearest utterings," a poetry of "pride, purity and strength."

Other poets who were Riley's friends and to whom he wrote poetry include Carmen: "To Bliss;" Madison Cawein: "A Southern Singer;" Rudyard Kipling; Joel Chandler Harris; Benjamin Parker; Robert Lewis Stevenson and Lew Wallace.

Clara Louise Bottsford, Riley's one-time fiance, wrote in the romantic mode. Her poem "Lancelot" for example appeared in the Indianapolis Saturday Herald of December 11, 1880 on the front page, as had Riley's "Poetical Gymnastics" column in the prior year. The lengthy poem describes Lancelot's feelings on his way into Guinevere's presence for a tryst. Lancelot feels "gloom" as he enters his "Queen of Passion's" room to do her bidding and "meet my doom!" He asks himself

Am I

The mighty Lancelot - to die

The meanest of the table round? ‑

I, Knight of Arthur's, fettered, bound, The willing slave of even his queen -Not his....nor any one's I weep, But mine!...God's pity I am tired.

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In August 1880 - to an aspiring writer - Riley explained how he wrote to market his writing. He urged writing for "today" and a general readership who are neither profound nor classical scholars. "...and not only avoid phrases, words or reference "of the old time order of literature," but "avoid, too, the very acquaintance

of it - because we are apt to absorb more or less of the peculiar ideas, meth­ods, etc. of those authors we read..." Then, also, "when I am forced to say a commonplace thing it is my effort, at least, to say it as it never has been said before - if such a thing can be done without an appar­ent strain." Writing it he tries to imagine himself competent to do so and then lays it aside for a day or so to resurrect it in

another mood and to tear it shreds if needs be.

In reviewing another poet's work he could be devestatingly blunt. As to the following poetry stanza, he offered comment.

"Fair home, where needs no solar ray To smile away the night;

Where shines an everlasting day, -The risen Lamb the light."

-The first line with "solar ray" in it! My God! what has "solar ray" to do with poetry! The second line pure poetry in idea, phrasing, everything; and the next two commonplace -the last one absolutely awful! Kill Mr. Buck for me, please. Gather the revered gentleman to his fathers. - Crucify him! - for it's an absolute shame that a man who could write poetry, only carpenters at it, and builds a poem, as he would a pig- pen out of unwieldy planks and clap-boards. Kill the gentleman I tell you! tramp on him as you would a bald "woolly worm!"

Book production at the Mitchell Printing Co. plant in Greenfield. Indiana.

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PARTIAL LIST OF PUBLISHED HOOSIER POETS OF THE POST CIVIL WAR ERA

Riley was a poet among many, many such artisans in Post Civil War Indiana. A very partial list of published Hoosier poets of the Nineteenth Century is compiled here to prove the point that many, many persons wrote poetry in Indiana during the Nineteenth Century: Albert Carlton Andrews, Marie L. Andrews, Albion Fellows Bacon, Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon, R.G. Ball, Granville M. Ballard, M.E. Banta, Margaret Holmes Bates, Bessie Johnson Bellman, Horace P. Biddle, G. Henry Bogart, Sarah T. Bolton, Allan Simpson Bottsford, Ethel Bowman, Minnie T. Boyce, Louisa Vickroy Boyd, Robert H. Brewington, Albert Fletcher Bridges, Mattie Dyer Britts, M. Sears Brooks, Alice Williams Brotherton, Jerome C. Burnett, Clarence A. Buskirk, Kate M. Caplinger, Emma N. Carleton, Mary Howard Catherwood, Emily Thornton Cahrles, M. Louisa Chitwood, Noah J. Clodfelter, Jethro C. Culmer, Will Cumback, George W. Cutter, Hannah E. Davis, Ida May Davis, Richard Lew Dawson, Charles Dennis, William T. Dennis, John B. Dillin, May W. Donnan, Amanda L.R. Dufour, Julia L. Dumont, John Gibson Dunn, Sidney Dyer, Elijah Evan Edwards, Alfred Ellison, Henry W. Ellsworth, Orpheus Everts, John Finley, Mary Hockett Flanner, Elizabeth E. Foulke, William W. Foulke, Willis Wilfred Fowler, Strickland W. Gillilan, Jerome Bonaparte Girard, Samuel B. Gookins, Jonathan W. Gordon, Frank W. Harned, Lee 0. Harris, William Wallace Harney, Irene Boynton Hawley, John Hay, Enos B. Heiney, Charles L.Holstein, Edwin S. Hopkins, Benjamin Davenport House, Horace F. Hubbard, Ben R. Hyman, Narcissa Lewis Jenkinson, Robert Underwood Johnson, Annie Fellows Johnston, Dulcina M. Jordan, David Starr Jordan, Isaac H. Julian, Esther Nelson Karn, Isaac Kinley, Jesse G. Kinley, Josie V.H. Koons, Mary-Hannah Krout, Harvey Porter Layton, Francis Locke, Richard K. Lyon, Zella McCoy, William W.H. McCurdy, Silas B. McManus, Arthur W. Macy, James B. Martindale, James Newton Matthews, Josephine W. Mellette, Freeman E. Miller, Joaquin Miller, Hattie Athon Morrison, Mary E. Nealy, William P. Needham, Rebecca S. Nichols, Meredith Nicholson, John C. Ochiltree, Richard Owen, Daniel L. Paine, Benjamin S. Parker, Edwin E. Parker, Oran K. Parker, Gavin Payne, William W. Pfrimmer, John James Piatt, Robert E. Pretlow, Herman Rave, Maude M. Redman, Joseph S. Reed, Peter Fishe Reed, Alonzo Rice, Renos H. Richards, John Clark Ridpath, Cornelia Laws St.John, Olive Sanxay, Henry J. Shellman, John W. Shockley, A.E. Sinks, Hubbard M. Smith, Evaleen Stein, Solomon P. Stoddard, George Stout, Juliet V. Strauss, Martina Swafford, Henry W. Taylor, Howard S. Taylor, John N. Taylor,

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Minetta T. Taylor, Tucker Woodson Taylor, E.S.L. Thompson, Maurice Thompson, Laura M. Thurston, Oliah P. Toph, Newton A. Trueblood, William B. Vickers, Lew Wallace, Susan E. Wallace, W. DeWitt Wallace, Luther Dana Watterman, L. May Wheeler, Louisa Wickersham, Elizabeth Conwell Wilson, Forsythe Wilson, and Bruce H. Woolford.

Riley liked to call his poetry "poem-songs." Once Riley was asked for a contribution for a school newspaper in his hometown. Riley responded with a letter:

Miss Helen Downing:

Dear Friend and Fellow Citizen, - It is just impossible for me to write a suitable article for "The High School BUDGET," in the time you give me, being now a child no more.

... As to the old song-rhymes of mine you desire to print - Yes, put 'em in "The BUDGET" if they're worthy...

That is how Riley described his poems...as song-rhymes.

By far, the great majority of Riley's works, even his poems, are not pre­served. That so many are seems close to a miracle and is a mark of Riley's poetic draw as well as the closeness of poetry at that time to the life of the American people.

Almost from the first of his newspaper career, Riley wrote many news­paper articles and editorials which did not carry his name. One of the par­ticular fields to which his writing was entrusted was editorials. A letter to Lee 0. Harris of December 25, 1895 mentions that an editorial he wrote appeared in that day's Journal which made his soul "blush to the roots of its hair."

Here is a poem clearly written with music in mind. Minnie Belle Mitchell recalls that Riley's poem "The Old Times Were the Best," was actually writ­ten in his early youth when Riley was in the company of young people, include herself, practicing for one of the many entertainments Riley did. Angie Williams, later Angie Downing, was playing the piano when Riley left for a time and when he returned he had with him the poem "The Old Times Were the Best." Later he gave a copy to Angie to put to music.

A POETRY ECHOING NATURE WITH HER OWN VOICE

I close with a dissenting opinion from the poet Donald Culross Peattie who felt Riley's poetry was not so much musical and doggerel as "natural." He finds that Riley's better poetry "tries to echo Nature with her own voice." Riley is a poet who speaks for American Nature. "His fame as a versifier has

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helped to rob him of the title he ought to have, "the poet of wisest Nature."

"Poets themselves may resent the suggestion that Riley is more than a versifier. Yet what is poetry if it is not the essence of things, the thought-dis­tilled, mood-condensed sweet sap of the tree of life? When a scientist has boiled down Nature to a quintessential, he hands you what he quite inaccu­rately calls a law. But when a poet does that, he stocks your memory with an unforgettable line that gets more about the subject into less space than prove can ever do. The man who said he was "knee-deep in June" is a Nature poet of the first rank."

Peattie continues, "Poems like "There little girl, don't cry", however sin­cere and popular, have done the reputation of Riley no lasting good. The truth is that like Burns he wrote in two different languages, and was two dif­ferent men in them. The dialect poems are, on the whole, the good poems as Burns' were. Humor keep them off the rocks of sentimentality. And why should humor, which has long been accepted in the drama as a sparkling vessel for truth and art, reduce a poet to the rank of a minor? For no reason except that about poetry we are iii a state of deadly earnestness, or in the dol­drums of a decaying gentility...

In the matter of dialect, it is immaterial whether Riley employed the speech that all Hoosiers used, or the colloquial language of Indiana today. There are few Scotchmen who speak the idiom of Burns. It is only essen­tial that the dialect should be the best medium for the subject that could have been chosen. And to my ear, at least, not only does Riley write the way the western child and farmer still often speak, but in setting style to subject his sense of pitch is nearly absolute. He vies with the grand masters of regional American literature, the Mark Twain of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, the Lowell of the BIGELOW PAPERS, and the Harris of UNCLE REMUS.

To one who was born in the Middle West, and has tried to write about its Nature, ...Riley's descriptions of birds on a hot summer day is still unsur­passed for that distillation of essence in the local speech which is poetry "come native with the warmth."