"
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.
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