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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


ON A FLY-LEAF by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

Poet Analysis

First Line: SINGERS THERE ARE OF COURTLY
Last Line: WITH THE RIGHTS AND THE WRONGS OF ALL MANKIND.
Subject(s): DREAMS; FANTASY; MANKIND; SINGING & SINGERS; NIGHTMARES; HUMAN RACE;

SINGERS there are of courtly themes --
@3Drapers@1 in verse -- who would dress their rhymes
In robes of ermine; and singers of dreams
Of gods high-throned in the classic times;
Singers of nymphs, in their dim retreats,
Satyrs, with scepter and diadem;
But the singer who sings as a man's heart beats
Well may blush for the rest of them.

I like the thrill of such poems as these, --
All spirit and fervor of splendid fact --
Pulse, and muscle, and arteries
Of living, heroic thought and act! --
Where every line is a vein of red
And rapturous blood all unconfined
As it leaps from a heart that has joyed and bled
With the rights and the wrongs of all mankind.



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