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1849–1916

HER BEAUTIFUL EYES

James Whitcomb Riley

O her beautiful eyes! they are blue as the dew On the violet's bloom when the morning is new, And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run

As the morn shifts the mists and the clouds from the skies So I stand in the dawn of her beautiful eyes. And her beautiful eyes are as mid-day to me, When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee,

And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat, And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies — So I swoon in the noon of her beautiful eyes.

O her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own As a glory glanced down from the glare of the Throne; And I reel, and I falter and fall, as afar Fell the shepherds that looked on the mystical Star,

And yet dazed in the tidings that bade them arise — So I groped through the night of her beautiful eyes.

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HER BEAUTIFUL EYES · James Whitcomb Riley · Poetry Cove