Rocky Ford enterprise., 1916-09-15
L4eIT RI1ZIC AP2E414HX

minded masters These Hoosiers. these Wild bards
and prancing. longlegged lovers of the moon. are
often captured and broken and tanned to trade
and industry by the more sordld citizenry. They
yoked to the handle end Of the plow,
chained to the desk by the hundreds and thou
sands they become clerks and statesmen and rail-
road presidents and novelists and business men
Of all sorts.
James Whitcomb Riley Hoosier who
happily escaped; he never captured. never
enslaved; the things hidden from the rest of us.
revealed only In flashes, remembered but
vaguely from the days Of our own happy Hoosier-
DOM he continued to steadily he lived among
them familiarly to the end and until the end
their interpreter to
bud come here TO your uncle n SPELL says
Riley in effect, and I'll show you not only fairy
but fairy who has for the moment chosen to be
just much of Hoosier the Raggedy Man.
or Orphant Annie or Old Kingry. or the folks AT
Griggsby Station
"The critics and the learned doctors of liter
already debating as TO whether Riley
had Imagination or only fancy. Ut would be
terrible calamity to some of them II they said
II was Imagination and II officially declared
later TO he merely fancy: that is the sort OF
mistake that damns a critic and makes the sons
and grandsons of critics meek. hacked. apolo
getic young menu And doubtless the point Is
ceedlngly important. For II poet has imagi
nation they say his work Is significant. And II
he has only fancy his work is significant
The chief merit of Riley's dialect verse
which Is the most popular part of his production
and the part with which the critics chiefly
cern themselves-is its effectiveness medium
for character portrayal. Whimsical. lovable.
h"mely. rary. quaint. salty. pathetic. humorous
tender are his dialect poems essentially. he has
shown us life as n superior writer Of prose
sketches might do. adding the cha",u of his Iyri-
cisni.
But. personally, never like him well ms
when he is writing sheer moonlight and music.
Probably no poet who wrote English-cer-
thinly no American poet-got more luscious Ian
guage than Riley. sweetness that is not SO
sngnry that ii clogs. having always n why tang.
For instance. from The Flying Islands of the
Night
: . In lost hours of lutte and song
When he was but prince-I but a mouth
For him to lift up sippingIy and drain
To his most ultimate Of stammering sobs
And mnudln wanderIngs Of blinded BREATH.
There Is no better evidence OF the genuine
ness OF ltileys sentiment particularly in the dia-
lect poems, than the discretion with which he
touches the pathetic chord when he touches It
at all. One of the popular poems he ever
wrote was 'Old-Fashioned Roses and one word
too much. pressure the least bit too insistent
would have made the thing offensive as a
vaudeville ballad. The taste which told him to
be simple and the sincerity which begat the
taste save the verses from the reproach.
His verses for children and about children
could only have been written by man whose
love and understanding of children was real for
children are quick to detect and repudlate any
thing or the sort that Is pumped up for effect
and they contributed enormously TO the general
feeling of afection for him. The regard of the
children was In n way testimonial to his per-
sisting y0uhfulness of spirit; he was still their
playmate: perhaps II is an earnest of immor-
tality, if immortality can be- Certainly love en-
dures longer than anything else. and this man
with the chlldli'te sweetness In his soul goes
from US loved as few men have been"