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Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley cover

Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley

Chapter 59: EROS
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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.

EROS

The storm of love has burst at last
Full on me: All the world, before,
Was like an alien, unknown shore
Along whose verge I laughing passed.—
But now—I laugh not any more,—
Bowed with a silence vast in weight
As that which falls on one who stands
For the first time on ocean sands,
Seeing and feeling all the great
Awe of the waves as they wash the lands
And billow and wallow and undulate.