Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON A FLY-LEAF, by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON A FLY-LEAF, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Singers there are of courtly
Last Line: With the rights and the wrongs of all mankind.
Alternate Author Name(s): Johnson Of Boone, Benj. F.
Subject(s): Dreams; Fantasy; Mankind; Singing & Singers; Nightmares; Human Race


SINGERS there are of courtly themes --
Drapers 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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