Part 2

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 Conkling takes a vacation, she does not "nod," as erstwhile Homer; she merely reverts to type and is a child again.

I think too highly of these poems to speak of the volume as though it were the finished achievement of a grown-up person. Some of the poems can be taken in that way, but by no means all. The child who writes them frequently transcends herself, but her thoughts for the most part are those proper to every imaginative child. Fairies play a large role in her fancies, and so does the sandman. There are kings, and princesses, and golden wings, and there are reminiscences of story-books, and hints of pictures that have pleased her. After all, that is the way we all make our poems, but the grown-up poet tries to get away from his author, he tries to see more than the painter has seen. The little girl is quite untroubled by any questions of technique. She takes what to her is the obvious always, and in these copied pieces it is, naturally, less her own peculiar obvious than in the nature poems.

Hilda Conkling is evidently possessed of a rare and accurate power of observation. And when we add this to her gift of imagination, we see that it is the perfectly natural play of these two faculties which makes what to her is an obvious expression. She does not search for it, it is her natural mode of thought. But, luckily for her, she has been guided by a wisdom which has not attempted to show her a better way. Her observation has been carefully, but unobtrusively, cultivated; her imagination has been stimulated by the reading of excellent books; but both these lines of instruction have been kept apparently apart from her own work. She has been let alone there; she has been taught by an analogy which she has never suspected. By this means, her poetical gift has functioned happily, without ever for a moment experiencing the tension of doubt.

A few passages will serve to show how well Hilda knows how to use her eyes:

"The water came in with a wavy look Like a spider's web."

A bluebird has a back "like a feathered sky." Apostrophizing a snow-capped mountain she writes:

"You shine like a lily But with a different whiteness."

She asks a humming-bird:

"Why do you stand on the air And no sun shining?"

She hears a chickadee:

"Far off I hear him talking The way smooth bright pebbles Drop into water."

Now let us follow her a step farther, to where the imagination takes a firmer hold:

"The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers. The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water."

School lessons, and a reflection in a pond--that is the stuff of which all poetry is made. It is the fusion which shows the quality of the poet. Turn to the text and read "Geography." Really, this is an extraordinary child!

It is pleasant to watch her with the artist's eagerness intrigued by the sounds of words, for instance:

"--silvery lonesome lapping of the long wave."

Again, enchanted by a little bell of rhyme, we have this amusing catalogue:

"John-flowers, Mary-flowers, Polly-flowers Cauli-flowers."

That is the conscious Hilda, the gay little girl, but it shows a quick ear nevertheless. We can almost hear the giggle with which that "Cauliflowers" came out. Usually rhyme does not appear to be a matter of moment to her. Some poets think in rhyme, some do not; Hilda evidently belongs to the second category. "Treasure," and "The Apple-Jelly-Fish-Tree," and "Short Story" are the only poems in the book which seem to follow a clearly rhymed pattern. If any misguided schoolmistress had ever suggested that a poem should have rhyme and metre, this book would never have been "told." In "Moon Doves," however, there is a distinctly metrical effect without rhyme. But the great majority of the poems are built upon cadence, and the subtlety of this little girl's cadences are a delight to those who can hear them. Doubtless her musical inheritance has all to do with this, for in poem after poem the instinct for rhythm is unerring. So constantly is this the case, that it is scarcely necessary to point out particular examples. I may, however, name, as two of her best for other qualities as well, "Gift," and "Poems." The latter contains two of her quick strokes of observation and comparison: the morning "like the inside of a snow-apple," and she herself curled "cushion-shaped" in the window-seat.

Dear me! How simple these poems seem when you read them done. But try to write something new about a dandelion. Try it; and then read the poem of that name here. It is charming; how did she think of it? How indeed!

Delightful conceits she has--another is "Sun Flowers"--but how comes a child of eight to prick and point with the rapier of irony? For it is nothing less than irony in "The Tower and the Falcon." Did she quite grasp its meaning herself? We may doubt it. In this poem, the subconscious is very much on the job.

To my thinking, the most successful poems in the book--and now I mean successful from a grown-up standpoint--are "For You, Mother," "Red Rooster," "Gift," "Poems," "Dandelion," "Butterfly," "Weather," "Hills," and "Geography." And it will be noticed that these are precisely the poems which must have sprung from actual experience. They are not the book poems, not even the fairy poems, they are the records of reactions from actual happenings. I have not a doubt that Hilda prefers her fairy-stories. They are the conscious play of her imagination, it must be "fun" to make them. Ah, but it is the unconscious with which we are most concerned, those very poems which are probably to her the least interesting are the ones which most certainly reveal the fulness of poetry from which she draws. She probably hardly thought at all, so natural was it, to say that three pinks "smell like more of them in a blue vase," but the expression fills the air with so strong a scent that no superlative could increase it.

"Gift" is a lovely poem, it has feeling, expression, originality, cadence. If a child can write such a poem at eight years old, what does it mean? That depends, I think, on how long the instructors of youth can be persuaded to keep "hands off." A period of imitation is, I fear, inevitable, but if consciousness is not induced by direct criticism, if instruction in the art of writing is abjured, the imitative period will probably be got through without undue loss. I think there is too much native sense of beauty and proportion here to be entirely killed even by the drying and freezing process which goes by the name of education.

What this book chiefly shows is high promise; but it also has its pages of real achievement, and that of so high an order it may well set us pondering. AMY LOWELL.