"Krinken was a little child,—
It was summer when he smiled."
Field could write exquisitely beautiful verse. His tender heart had felt the pathos of life, and he knew how to set this pathos to music. He was naturally a humorist, and his humor often caused him to take a right angle turn in the midst of serious thoughts. Parents have for nearly a quarter of a century used the combination of humor and pathos in his poem, The Little Peach, to keep their children from eating green fruit:—
"A little peach in the orchard grew,—
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,
It grew.
* * * * *
"John took a bite and Sue a chew,
And then the trouble began to brew,—
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue.
Too true!
"Under the turf where the daisies grew
They planted John and his sister Sue,
And their little souls to the angels flew,—
Boo hoo!"
Time is not likely to rob Eugene Field of the fame of having written The
Canterbury Tales of Childhood.
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, 1853-1916
[Illustration: JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY]
The poet of our time who has most widely voiced the everyday feeling of democracy, of the man on the farm, in the workshop, and in his home circle, is James Whitcomb Riley. His popularity with this generation suggests the part which the ballad makers played in developing a love for verse before Shakespeare came.