The best-loved poems by the "Hoosier Poet" are here collected to read and cherish time and time again. Included are some of Riley's most durable and endearing works-poems about nature, home, and country as well as the dialect poems for which Riley is famous.
Editor's Preface
James Whitcomb Riley
1870 A Backward Look
1872 The Old Times Were the Best
1874 "Tradin' Joe"
The Bear Story
Farmer Whipple-Bachelor
Dot Leedle Boy
1875 If I Knew What Poets Know
An Old Sweetheart of Mine
Squire Hawkins's Story
1876 The Old Guitar
The Silent Victors
Her Beautiful Hands
1877 The Rose
Leonainie
Fame
1878 "Dream"
From The Flying Islands of the Night
1879 The Tree-Toad
The Little Town of Tailholt
1880 Lockerbie Street
At Utter Loaf
The Used-to-Be
Grandfather Squeers
The Prayer Perfect
Kissing the Rod
Jack the Giant-Killer
The Nine Little Goblins
1881 The Orchard Lands of Long Ago
1882 The Days Gone By
The Circus-Day Parade
The Old Swimmin'-Hole
The Clover
Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer
Wortermelon Time
My Fiddle
My Philosofy
A Summer's Day
On the Death of Little Mahala Ashcraft
A Hymb of Faith
When the Frost is on the Punkin
1883 An Autumnal Tonic
"The Preacher's Boy"
A Sudden Shower
The Man in the Moon
The All-Golden
Nothin' to Say
Wet-Weather Talk
1884 The Pixy People
Out to Old Aunt Mary's
Away
1885 On the Banks o' Deer Crick
Little Orphant Annie
The Land of Thus-and-So
Granny
Pap's Old Sayin'
The Train-Misser
Griggsby's Station
Knee-deep in June
1886 When the World Bu'sts Through
The Happy Little Cripple
Old October
Her Beautiful Eyes
1887 Doc Siefers
1888 The Old Man and Jim
When the Green Gits Back in the Trees
Down around the River
1889 Down to the Capital
Waitin' fer the Cat to Die
1890 The Pet Coon
The Squirt-Gun Uncle Maked Me
Our Hired Girl
The Bumblebee
The Runaway Boy
The Raggedy Man
The Old Band
1891 "Coon-Dog Wess"
Decoration Day on the Place
1894 Up and Down Old Brandywine
The Schoolboy's Favorite
1895 To Almon Keefer
A Peace-Hymn of the Republic
1896 The Hired Man and Floretty
The Name of Old Glory
1900 The Hired Man's Faith in Children
1902 No Boy Knows
The Lisper
1903 Almost beyond Endurance
1906 While the Heart Beats Young!
1907 Bub Says
'Lizabuth-Ann on Bakin'-Day
The Raggedy Man on Children
Sketches in Prose
The Old Soldier's Story
Where Is Mary Alice Smith?
The Object Lesson