James Whitcomb Riley

Old Fashioned Roses

Dialect spelling

Riley spells phonetically throughout—'ain't,' 'yit,' 'fer'—to capture rural Indiana speech. This isn't carelessness; it's deliberate characterization of the speaker's class and region.

They ain't no style about 'em,
 And they're sort o' pale and faded
Yit the doorway here without 'em
 Would be lonesomer, and shaded
  With a good 'eal blacker shadder
   Than the morning-glories makes
  And the sunshine would look sadder
   Fer their good old-fashion' sakes.
I like 'em 'cause they kind o'
 Sort o' make a feller like 'em!
And I tell you, when I find a
 Bunch out whur the sun kin strike 'em,
  It allus sets me thinkin'
   O' the ones 'at used to grow
  And peek in through the chinkin'

Cabin chinking

Chinking is the mud or clay stuffed between logs in cabin walls. Roses growing tall enough to 'peek in through' gaps means a poor dwelling, not a proper house with glass windows.

   O' the cabin, don't you know!
And then I think o' mother,
 And how she ust to love 'em -
When they wuzn't any other,
 'Less she found 'em up above 'em!
  And her eyes, afore she shut 'em,
   Whispered with a smile and said

Deathbed request

The mother's last wish—roses in her hand at death—turns a simple flower preference into a sacred obligation. This is why he still grows them.

  We must pick a bunch and putt 'em
   In her hand when she wuz dead.
But, as I wuz a-sayin',
 They ain't no style about 'em

Dialect spelling

Riley spells phonetically throughout—'ain't,' 'yit,' 'fer'—to capture rural Indiana speech. This isn't carelessness; it's deliberate characterization of the speaker's class and region.

Very gaudy er displayin',
 But I wouldn't be without 'em, -
  'Cause I'm happier in these posies,

Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks were cottage garden staples, tall and showy but common. Pairing them with 'sich' (such) groups them as humble, unfashionable flowers—the botanical equivalent of his dialect.

   And hollyhawks and sich,
  Than the hummin'-bird 'at noses
   In the roses of the rich.

Class contrast

'The roses of the rich' are likely hybrid tea roses, fashionable in the 1880s-90s. His old-fashioned roses are probably damask or gallica varieties—pale, fragrant, unfashionable.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Riley's Hoosier Poet Persona

CONTEXT James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) built his career on rural Indiana dialect poetry, becoming one of America's best-paid poets by the 1890s. He wasn't actually a poor farmer—his father was a lawyer—but he perfected the voice of one.

The dialect spelling here is systematic: 'wuzn't,' 'whur,' 'ust to,' 'afore.' Riley doesn't just drop g's; he respells entire words to capture how rural Hoosiers sounded to urban readers. This was entertainment for middle-class audiences who found the voice charming and authentic, though modern readers might find it condescending.

Notice the speaker's self-awareness about class: he explicitly contrasts his 'posies' with 'the roses of the rich' and their hummingbirds. The old-fashioned roses are 'pale and faded,' lacking 'style'—he knows they're unfashionable. But he frames this as moral superiority: he's 'happier' in his simple flowers. The poem sells rural poverty as spiritual wealth, a common move in 19th-century American poetry.

The Circular Structure

This poem repeats itself exactly—stanzas 1-4 are identical to stanzas 5-8. It's not a printing error; it's the structure. Riley uses this 32-line loop to mirror how memory works: you keep returning to the same scenes, the same doorway, the same roses.

The pivot point is stanza 3, the mother's deathbed wish. Everything before builds to it; everything after circles back from it. The repetition makes the poem feel like an annual ritual—planting the same roses, remembering the same promise, year after year.

This circular form also mimics oral storytelling. A speaker telling this story out loud might naturally loop back to the beginning, reinforcing the main point: these roses matter because of what they represent, not how they look. The form enacts the content—both are 'old-fashioned,' both repeat traditional patterns rather than pursuing novelty.