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Her Hair

By James Whitcomb Riley

Topics: classic

The beauty of her hair bewilders me -     Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide     Swirling about the ears on either side     And storming round the neck tumultuously:     Or like the lights of old antiquity     Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide     Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified     In chastest marble, nude of drapery.     And so I love it. Either unconfined;     Or plaited in close braidings manifold;     Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined     In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled     At any lightest kiss; or by the wind     Whipped out in flossy ravellings of gold.

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"The beauty of her hair bewilders me -..."

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Author:James Whitcomb Riley

"The beauty of her hair bewilders me -..." by James Whitcomb Riley

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

James Whitcomb Riley

About James Whitcomb Riley

James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) was an American poet known as the "Hoosier Poet." His dialect poems—including "Little Orphant Annie" and "When the Frost Is on the Punkin"—celebrate rural Indiana life and childhood nostalgia.

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