James Whitcomb Riley

The Old Swimmin' Hole

{{sc|Oh}}! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know

Paradise/childhood equation

Riley compares the swimmin' hole to Paradise itself—the place before memory, before the Fall. This isn't just nostalgia; it's a theological frame where childhood = Eden and growing up = expulsion.

Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,
And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.
Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore,
When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,
Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide
That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,
It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress

Self-love through reflection

The speaker loves himself only through the water's mirror. Once that reflection is gone, self-love becomes impossible. This is the poem's emotional core: not just losing a place, but losing the self that place reflected back.

My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness.
But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll
From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.
Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy-days
When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways,
How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane,

Dialect as class marker

Riley uses heavy dialect (ust, sich, whare, worter) to anchor this in rural working-class Indiana. The dialect isn't quaint—it's essential to the poem's authenticity and its claim on universal loss.

Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane
You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole
They was lots o'fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole.
But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll
Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.
There the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,
And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;
And it mottled the worter with amber and gold
Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;
And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by
Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,

Snake-feeder/dragonfly simile

The 'snake-feeder' (regional name for dragonfly) becomes a ghost, then a wounded blossom. Nature is already ghostly and broken in the speaker's memory—foreshadowing the poem's ending.

Snake-feeder/dragonfly simile

The 'snake-feeder' (regional name for dragonfly) becomes a ghost, then a wounded blossom. Nature is already ghostly and broken in the speaker's memory—foreshadowing the poem's ending.

Or a wounded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle
As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.
Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place,
The scene was all changed, like the change in my face;
The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot

Railroad as progress/destruction

The railroad bridge replaces the diving log—industrial modernity literally covers the site of childhood. This isn't metaphorical; the infrastructure of progress physically erases the past.

Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot.
And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be -
But never again will theyr shade shelter me!

Death as final dive

The final wish to 'dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole' collapses past and present: death becomes a return to the only place the speaker ever felt whole. The poem ends by making suicide sound like homecoming.

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,
And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Dialect and the geography of loss

Riley writes this poem in deliberate Indiana dialect—'ust' for 'used,' 'whare' for 'where,' 'sich' for 'such'—and this choice is crucial. [CONTEXT: Riley was a major figure in the "Hoosier School" of late 19th-century American poetry, celebrating rural Indiana life.] The dialect isn't decorative. It's a marker of class and place: this is a working-class boy's memory, not a gentleman's. The barefoot children, the schoolyard escape, the dusty lane—all are anchored in a specific geography and social position.

But here's what matters: the dialect makes the poem's loss more devastating, not less. A speaker in standard English could be sentimental about childhood. A speaker in this dialect is claiming something harder—that authentic human value, real joy, real selfhood, existed in a place and class that progress (the railroad) has erased. The dialect is the poem's argument: that what was lost was real.

The mirror and the self

The poem's emotional structure turns on a single image: the speaker seeing his reflection in the water and loving himself through that reflection. > 'It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress / My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness.' This isn't vanity. It's the only place the speaker ever felt lovable—not through another person's eyes, but through his own image returned to him by nature.

When the railroad bridge covers the hole, that mirror is gone. The final lines reveal the consequence: > 'And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, / And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.' Without the place that reflected him, the speaker has nowhere to find himself. Death becomes attractive not as escape but as a return—a final dive back into the only water that ever showed him his own worth. The poem isn't about nostalgia for swimming. It's about the psychological devastation of losing the one place that made you feel real.