10

By the brook with mossy brink, Where the cattle came to drink, They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink,

Till the kine, in listless pause,

Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads, and dreamy eyes, And bubble-dripping jaws.

11

And where the melons grew,

Streaked with yellow, green, and blue,

These jolly sprites went wandering
Through spangled paths of dew;
And the melons, here and there,
They made love to, everywhere,

5

10

Turning their pink souls to crimson

15

With caresses fond and fair.

12

Over orchard walls they went,

Where the fruited boughs were bent

Till they brushed the sward beneath them
Where the shine and shadow blent;
And the great green pear they shook,

Till the sallow hue forsook

Its features, and the gleam of gold

Laughed out in every look.

13

And they stroked the downy cheek
Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,
And flushed it into splendor;

And, with many an elfish freak,
Gave the russet's rust a wipe
Prankt the rambo with a stripe,
And the winesap blushed its reddest
As they spanked the pippins ripe.

14

Through the woven ambuscade
That the twining vines had made,
They found the grapes, in clusters,
Drinking up the shine and shade-
Plumpt, like tiny skins of wine,
With a vintage so divine
That the tongue of fancy tingled
With the tang of muscadine.

15

And the golden-banded bees,
Droning o'er the flowery leas,
They bridled, reined, and rode away
Across the fragrant breeze,

Till in hollow oak and elm

They had groomed and stabled them In waxen stalls that oozed with dews Of rose and lily-stem.

16

Where the dusty highway leads,
High above the wayside weeds,
They sowed the air with butterflies
Like blooming flower-seeds,
Till the dull grasshopper sprung
Half a man's height up, and hung
Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,
And sung, and sung, and sung!

5

10

15

19

And the fairy vessel veered
From its moorings -

tacked and steered

For the center of the current

Sailed away and disappeared:
And the burthen that it bore

From the long-enchanted shore —
"Alas! the South Wind and the Sun!"

I murmur evermore.

20

For the South Wind and the Sun,
Each so loves the other one,

For all his jolly folly,

And frivolity and fun,

That our love for them they weigh
As their fickle fancies may,

And when at last we love them most,
They laugh and sail away.

From the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, Copyright, 1913. Used by special permission of the Publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What did the South Wind | 3. Describe the Sun's appearand the Sun play like?

ance. Is it a good de-
scription?

Describe them both further
as told in stanza 4.
Tell what they did and what

The sun can image itself in a tiny dewdrop or in the