She took them when the King met her at the castle gate, the lovely little Princess with the golden crown shining dim in the blithesome gold of her hair; took them with a smile that
"Lighted her tears as the summer sun
Transfigures the summer rain."
The poems we give you here, young princes and princesses of the twentieth century, are all Singing Leaves of one sort or another. There are leaves that sing tragedies, like those in "Earl Haldan's Daughter," "The High Tide," or "The Sands o' Dee"; there are leaves that sing fantasies, like "The Forsaken Merman," "The Pied Piper," or the enchanting "Lady of Shalott," weaving her magic web of colors gay. There are Singing Leaves that grew on the Tree of Reality; leaves that tell stories like Bret Harte's "Greyport Legend" or Browning's "Hervé Riel"; while in "Seven Times Two," the "Swan's Nest," "Lord Ullin," "Young Lochinvar," and "Jock o' Hazledean" you have pure romances, sweet and youthful, gay and daring.
XIII
STORY POEMS: ROMANCE AND REALITY
The Singing Leaves
I
"What fairings will ye that I bring?"
Said the King to his daughters three;
"For I to Vanity Fair am boun',
Now say what shall they be?"