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."