" 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.
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