A Barefoot Boy

By James Whitcomb Riley 1849–1916

A barefoot boy! I mark him at his play—

For May is here once more, and so is he,—

His dusty trousers, rolled half to the knee,

And his bare ankles grimy, too, as they:

Cross-hatchings of the nettle, in array

Of feverish stripes, hint vividly to me

Of woody pathways winding endlessly

Along the creek, where even yesterday

He plunged his shrinking body—gasped and shook—

Yet called the water "warm," with never lack

Of joy. And so, half enviously I look

Upon this graceless barefoot and his track,—

His toe stubbed—ay, his big toe-nail knocked back

Like unto the clasp of an old pocketbook.

Biography

Known as “The Hoosier Poet” because of his birth in Indiana and poems celebrating the state, and as “The Children’s Poet” due to his appeal for young readers, James Whitcomb Riley was one of his day’s best-selling writers. Full of sentiment and traditional in form, his work features rustic subjects who speak in a homely, countrified dialect. When Riley died, Woodrow Wilson called him “a man who imparted joyful pleasure and a . . .

Continue reading this biography