When His Thoughts Was as Free

Many apologies for not updating this blog in several months.  I’m going to try to do better in future.

It has currently reached that point in the day when I require a pep-talk to forge on with work.  The eye of heaven has cast its gaze on parts west and so I feel like I can put my labours to rest.  But humans invented artificial light for a reason, and so I should really continue on.  I will, however, sneak in a short post.  You won’t tell, will you?

Sometimes during long days at the office my mind starts to wonder.  Especially on gray, soggy winter days like today it settles on good memories of careless summer days.  Few poets better captured the simple joys of maidenhood youth better than James Whitcomb Riley (sorry for briefly recalling Camelot).

Riley was a poet who spent most of his life in Indianapolis.  Many of his early poems were published in a Hoosier dialect (like the one below).  His collection “The Old Swimmin’ Hole” (1883) is every bit as folksy as the title suggests.  One of his most famous poems, “When the frost is on the pumpkin,” is published in the volume.  One of my favourites is “The Mulberry Tree.”  It could have been a very grating elegy for a misremembered past.  But there’s a tinge of melancholy in the poem that I think gives it a bit of emotional heft.  Sentimental, of course.  But totally effective.  Here’s the last stanza: 

Then its who fergit the old mulberry

   tree

That he knowed in the days when his

   thoughts was as free

As the flutterin’ wings of the birds that

   flew out

Of the tall wavin’ tops as the boys come

   about?

O, a crowd of my memories, laughin’ and

   gay,

Is a-climbin’ the fence of that pastur’ to-

   day,

And a-pantin’ with joy, as us boys ust to be,

They go racin’ acrost fer the mulberry tree.