FROST AND SANDBURG TONIGHT

Apple green bird on a wooden bough,

And the brazen sound of a long, loud row,

And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do—

Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!"

Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed,

Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd,

The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied,

The Poets that cover the countryside!

The Poets I never would meet till tonight!

A gleam of their eyes in the fading light,

And I took them all in—the enormous throng—

And with one great bound I bolted along.

If the garden had merely held birds and flowers!

But I hear a voice—they have talked for hours—

"Frost tonight—" if 'twere merely he!

Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee!

Charles Hanson Towne

(Who rather begrudged the time he used up in going out to the suburbs.)