Poems By a Little Girl | Page 4

have
been
injured.
Then again, blessed though many of the nurses
of childhood
undoubtedly are (and we all remember
them), they have no means of
answering the
thousand and one questions of an eager, opening

mind. To be an adequate companion to childhood,
one must know so
many things. Hilda is
fortunate in her mother, for if these poems
reveal

one thing more than another it is that Mrs.
Conkling is
dowered with an admirable tact. In
the dedication poem to her mother,

the little girl
says:
"If I sing, you listen;
If I think, you know."
No finer tribute could be offered by one person to
another than the
contented certainty of understanding
in those two lines.
Hilda tells her poems, and the method of it is
this: They come out in
the course of conversation,
and Mrs. Conkling is so often engaged in

writing that there is nothing to be remarked if she
scribbles
absently while talking to the little girls.
But this scribbling is really a
complete draught of
the poem. Occasionally Mrs. Conkling writes

down the poem later from memory and reads it
afterwards to the child,
who always remembers
if it is not exactly in its original form. No line,

no cadence, is altered from Hilda's version; the
titles have been
added for convenience, but they
are merely obvious handles derived
from the
text.
Naturally it is only a small proportion of
Hilda's life which is given to
poetry. Much is
devoted to running about, a part to study, etc. It
is,
however, significant that Hilda is not very keen
about games with
other children. Not that she
is by any means either shy or solitary, but
they do
not greatly interest her. Doubtless childhood
pays its debt
of possession more steadily than we
know.
Now to turn to the book itself; at the very start,
here is an amazing
thing. This slim volume contains
one hundred and seven separate
poems, and
that is counting as one all the very short pieces
written
between the ages of five and six. Certainly
that is a remarkable output
for a little girl,
and the only possible explanation is that the poems

are perfectly instinctive. There is no working
over as with an adult
poet. Hilda is subconscious,
not self-conscious. Her mother says that
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 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