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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416547" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Almon Keefer</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,<br>With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,<br>And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes<br>With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise<br>And joyous interest in flower and tree,<br>And poising humming-bird, and maundering bee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fields and woods he knew; the tireless tramp<br>With gun and dog; and the night-fisher's camp--<br>No other boy, save Bee Lineback, had won<br>Such brilliant mastery of rod and gun.<br>Even in his earliest childhood had he shown<br>These traits that marked him as his father's own.<br>Dogs all paid Almon honor and bow-wowed<br>Allegiance, let him come in any crowd<br>Of rabbit-hunting town-boys, even though<br>His own dog 'Sleuth' rebuked their acting so<br>With jealous snarls and growlings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the best<br>Of Almon's virtues--leading all the rest--<br>Was his great love of books, and skill as well<br>In reading them aloud, and by the spell<br>Thereof enthralling his mute listeners, as<br>They grouped about him in the orchard grass,<br>Hinging their bare shins in the mottled shine<br>And shade, as they lay prone, or stretched supine<br>Beneath their favorite tree, with dreamy eyes<br>And Argo-fandes voyaging the skies.<br>'Tales of the Ocean' was the name of one<br>Old dog's-eared book that was surpassed by none<br>Of all the glorious list.--Its back was gone,<br>But its vitality went bravely on<br>In such delicious tales of land and sea<br>As may not ever perish utterly.<br>Of still more dubious caste, 'Jack Sheppard' drew<br>Full admiration; and 'Dick Turpin,' too.<br>And, painful as the fact is to convey,<br>In certain lurid tales of their own day,<br>These boys found thieving heroes and outlaws<br>They hailed with equal fervor of applause:<br>'The League of the Miami'--why, the name<br>Alone was fascinating--is the same,<br>In memory, this venerable hour<br>Of moral wisdom shorn of all its power,<br>As it unblushingly reverts to when<br>The old barn was 'the Cave,' and hears again<br>The signal blown, outside the buggy-shed--<br>The drowsy guard within uplifts his head,<br>And ''_Who goes there?_'' is called, in bated breath--<br>The challenge answered in a hush of death,--<br>'Sh!--'_Barney Gray!_'' And then ''_What do you seek?_''<br>''_Stables of The League!_'' the voice comes spent and weak,<br>For, ha! the _Law_ is on the 'Chieftain's' trail--<br>Tracked to his very lair!--Well, what avail?<br>The 'secret entrance' opens--closes.--So<br>The 'Robber-Captain' thus outwits his foe;<br>And, safe once more within his 'cavern-halls,'<br>He shakes his clenched fist at the warped plank-walls<br>And mutters his defiance through the cracks<br>At the balked Enemy's retreating backs<br>As the loud horde flees pell-mell down the lane,<br>And--_Almon Keefer_ is himself again!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Excepting few, they were not books indeed<br>Of deep import that Almon chose to read;--<br>Less fact than fiction.--Much he favored those--<br>If not in poetry, in hectic prose--<br>That made our native Indian a wild,<br>Feathered and fine-preened hero that a child<br>Could recommend as just about the thing<br>To make a god of, or at least a king.<br>Aside from Almon's own books--two or three--<br>His store of lore The Township Library<br>Supplied him weekly: All the books with 'or's--<br>Sub-titled--lured him--after 'Indian Wars,'<br>And 'Life of Daniel Boone,'--not to include<br>Some few books spiced with humor,--'Robin Hood'<br>And rare 'Don Quixote.'--And one time he took<br>'Dadd's Cattle Doctor.'... How he hugged the book<br>And hurried homeward, with internal glee<br>And humorous spasms of expectancy!--<br>All this confession--as he promptly made<br>It, the day later, writhing in the shade<br>Of the old apple-tree with Johnty and<br>Bud, Noey Bixler, and The Hired Hand--<br>Was quite as funny as the book was not....<br>O Wonderland of wayward Childhood! what<br>An easy, breezy realm of summer calm<br>And dreamy gleam and gloom and bloom and balm<br>Thou art!--The Lotus-Land the poet sung,<br>It is the Child-World while the heart beats young....</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the heart beats young!--O the splendor of the Spring,<br>With all her dewy jewels on, is not so fair a thing!<br>The fairest, rarest morning of the blossom-time of May<br>Is not so sweet a season as the season of to-day<br>While Youth's diviner climate folds and holds us, close caressed,<br>As we feel our mothers with us by the touch of face and breast;--<br>Our bare feet in the meadows, and our fancies up among<br>The airy clouds of morning--while the heart beats young.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the heart beats young and our pulses leap and dance.<br>With every day a holiday and life a glad romance,--<br>We hear the birds with wonder, and with wonder watch their flight--<br>Standing still the more enchanted, both of hearing and of sight,<br>When they have vanished wholly,--for, in fancy, wing-to-wing<br>We fly to Heaven with them; and, returning, still we sing<br>The praises of this lower Heaven with tireless voice and tongue,<br>Even as the Master sanctions--while the heart beats young.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the heart beats young!--While the heart beats young!<br>O green and gold old Earth of ours, with azure overhung<br>And looped with rainbows!--grant us yet this grassy lap of thine--<br>We would be still thy children, through the shower and the shine!<br>So pray we, lisping, whispering, in childish love and trust<br>With our beseeching hands and faces lifted from the dust<br>By fervor of the poem, all unwritten and unsung,<br>Thou givest us in answer, while the heart beats young.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Whitcomb+Riley">James Whitcomb Riley</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416547" data-title="Almon Keefer de James Whitcomb Riley" data-description="Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,
With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,
And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes
With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise
And joyous interest in flower and tree,
And poising humming-bird, and ..."></div>
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