Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley

Chapter 51: OUR OWN

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About This Book

A mixed collection of poems and prose sketches that depicts small‑town and rural life through vernacular narration, sentimental observation, and comic detail. Longer narrative pieces explore personal loss, domestic struggles, and neighborhood intrigues, while shorter lyrics and children’s verses celebrate play, memory, and everyday tenderness. The voice shifts between musical, folksy dialect and plain colloquial phrasing, producing a rhythmic, conversational tone. Recurrent concerns include household labor, family ties, youthful fancy, and the mingled humor and nostalgia of ordinary community experience.

OUR OWN

They walk here with us, hand-in-hand;

We gossip, knee-by-knee;

They tell us all that they have planned—

Of all their joys to be,—

And, laughing, leave us: And, to-day,

All desolate we cry

Across wide waves of voiceless graves—

Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!