Nostalgia and summer seem to be soul mates. James Whitcomb Riley's "The Old Swimmin'-Hole" is a delightful example of a man recalling his boyhood in summer.
James Whitcomb Riley’s poem “The Old Swimmin’-Hole” belongs to that genre of poetry that looks back at one’s childhood. It shares that theme with Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” and John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Barefoot Boy.” Riley’s poem features couplets as Whittier’s did as well as five stanzas, but Riley’s stanzas are only eight lines long, for a total 40 line poem. Riley’s poem also features a Kentuckiana dialect.
First Stanza: “Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep”
The speaker begins by asserting that the old swimming hole was actually a creek, but it looked like a “baby river,” a description that pretty much reveals the truth about a “crick.” He portrays the “gurgle” of the creek as a heavenly sound “like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know / Before we could remember anything but the eyes.”
Then in the last couplet, the speaker makes it clear that he is now a grown man looking back at his pleasant experiences swimming in the creek: “But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, / And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.”
Second Stanza: “Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore”
Next, the speaker paints a portrait of his experience: he used to climb up in a sycamore tree and out onto a branch that jutted out over the stream; he claims he could see his own face in the water.” Then again, he laments the passing of those days for now he is an “old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.”
Third Stanza: “Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days”
In the third stanza, the speaker says that kids would skip school to go swimming. He describes the boys as barefooted and running to the place where “They was lots o' fun.” And yet again, he laments that the joys of those days are lost: “But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll / Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.”
The “old dusty lane” leading to creek was so pleasant to the bare feet of the boys, and the speaker unashamedly tells them to go ahead and shed a few tears at the loss of those days. He does so with a colorful exaggeration: “Let your tears in sorrow roll / Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.”
Fourth Stanza: “Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall”
The fourth stanza offers a lovely description of the area around the creek. The bullrushes and cattails grow thick and tall, and with the sunshine and shadows they gleam along the water with “amber and gold.” There are lilies and butterflies to decorate the scene further. One butterfly’s wings are like “the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky.”
Fifth Stanza: “Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place“
The last stanza provides the sorrow that nostalgia sometimes evokes. The speaker describes the changes that the beloved swimming hole had undergone the last time he visited it: a railroad bring “now crosses the spot.” The old diving logs were sunken and forlorn looking from lack of use.
The speaker qualifies his sadness with a fascinating and fairly apt metaphor: “I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, / And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.” The experience of swimming in the old swimmin’ hole has been so attractive to him that he hopes to shed his body like clothes and have his soul experience the grave as his body had experienced the creek.
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Summer Poem Poll
Please take a moment to vote for your favorite summer poem in this month’s poll. Your choices are:
- 1. Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives”
- 2. John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Barefoot Boy”
- 3. James Whitcomb Riley’s “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”
- 4. Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird”
- 5. Amy Lowell’s “Penumbra”
The poll is located under the blog on the homepage of the Poetry site. Thank you for participating in this month’s poll.
