The Days Gone by
O the days gone by! O the days gone by!The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye;The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quailAs he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale;When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky,And my happy heart brimmed over, in the days gone by.
In the days gone by, when my naked feet were trippedBy the honeysuckle tangles where the water-lilies dipped,And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink,Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink,And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cryAnd the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.
O the days gone by! O the days gone by!The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye;The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring--The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,--When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.
Words in this poem
- pathway n.
- A footpath; a beaten track; any path or course. Also used figuratively.
- chirrup v. t.
- To quicken or animate by chirping; to cherup. [See Chirp.]
- piped a.
- Formed with a pipe; having pipe or pipes; tubular.
- brink n.
- The edge, margin, or border of a steep place, as of a precipice; a bank or edge, as of a river or pit; a verge; a border; as, the brink of a chasm. Also Fig. [Dan. brink edge, verge; akin to Sw. brink declivity, hill, Icel. brekka; cf. LG. brink a grassy hill, W. bryn hill, bryncyn hillock.]
- wayward a.
- Taking one's own way; disobedient; froward; perverse; willful. [OE. weiward, for aweiward, i. e., turned away. See Away, and -ward.]
- lustre n.
- A period of five years; a lustrum. [L. lustrum: cf. F. lustre.]
- olden a.
- Old; ancient; as, the olden time.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Days Gone by is in the public domain. This text is taken from Riley Child-Rhymes, Project Gutenberg ebook #9777; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Whitcomb Riley, The Days Gone by, in Riley Child-Rhymes (1890), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9777, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/riley-child-rhymes/the-days-gone-by.html, id L25041.
Form and metre
The Days Gone by is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABBAA, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBAA byA · ryeA · quailB · nightingaleB · skyA · byA
- 2 AABBCC trippedA · dippedA · brinkB · drinkB · cryC · byC
- 3 AABBAA byA · eyeA · ringB · everythingB · sighA · byA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O the days gone by! O the days gone by! | 10 | ·········· |
| The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye; | 14 | ·/˘··/˘··/···· |
| The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail | 14 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘··· |
| As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale; | 15 | ···˘/·/···/˘/˘˘ |
| When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky, | 15 | ······/˘······· |
| And my happy heart brimmed over, in the days gone by. | 13 | ··/˘········· |
| In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| By the honeysuckle tangles where the water-lilies dipped, | 15 | ··/˘·˘/˘··/˘/˘· |
| And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink, | 15 | ··/˘··/˘···˘/·· |
| Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, | 15 | ··/˘··/˘/˘/˘··· |
| And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry | 15 | ··/˘··/˘··/˘/˘· |
| And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by. | 13 | ··/˘··/˘····· |
| O the days gone by! O the days gone by! | 10 | ·········· |
| The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye; | 14 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘··· |
| The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring-- | 14 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,-- | 14 | ·/˘·/·˘·˘/·/˘· |
| When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, | 14 | ·····/˘/˘/˘··· |
| In the golden olden glory of the days gone by. | 13 | ··/˘/˘/˘····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.