hat she
rarely hesitates for a word. When the feeling is strong, it speaks
for itself. Read the dedication poem, "For You, Mother." It is full of
feeling, and of that simple, dignified, adequate diction which is the
speech of feeling:

"I have found a way of thinking
To make you happy."

That is beautiful, and, once read, inevitable; but it waited for a child
to say. Poem after poem is charged with this feeling, this expression of
great love:

"I will sing you a song,
Sweets-of-my-heart,
With love in it,
(How I love you!)"

"Will you love me to-morrow after next
As if I had a bird's way of singing?"

But it is not only the pulse of feeling in such passages which makes
them surprising; it is the perfectly original expression of it. When one
reads a thing and voluntarily exclaims: "How beautiful! How natural!
How true!" then one knows that one has stumbled upon that flash of
personality which we call genius. These poems are full of such flashes:

"Sparkle up, little tired flower
Leaning in the grass!"

. . .

"There is a star that runs very fast,
That goes pulling the moon
Through the tops of the poplars."

. . .

"There is sweetness in the tree,
And fireflies are counting the leaves.
I like this country,
I like the way it has."

A pansy has a "thinking face"; a rooster has a comb "gay as a parade,"
he shouts "crooked words, loud . . . sharp . . . not beautiful!";
frozen water is asked if it cannot "lift" itself "with sun," and "Easter
morning says a glad thing over and over."

No matter who wrote them, those passages would be beautiful, the oldest
poet in the world could not improve upon them; and yet the reader has
only to turn to the text to see the incredibly early age at which such
expressions came into the author's mind.

Where childhood betrays genius is in the mounting up of detail.
Inadequate lines not infrequently jar a total effect, as when, in the
poem of the star pulling the moon, she suddenly ends, "Mr. Moon, does he
make you hurry?" Or, speaking of a drop of water:

"So it went on with its life
For several years
Until at last it was never heard of
Any more."

This is the perennial child, thinking as children think; and we are glad
of it. It makes the whole more healthy, more sure of development. When
the subconscious mind of Hilda C