Pantings! Pantings! Pantings! Trousers through all the town! And the tailors' dummies with iron for tummies Smirk in their blue and brown; I float in a slithering simoon Of fevered and surging tints, And my ears are dulled with the mighty throb Of the Male Best Dressers' Hints: _Pantings! Pantings! Pantings!_ _My wardrobe, they send it fleet...._ _Ah, the Is and the Was and the Never Does...._ _And the Cosmos at last complete!_ _Bliss Carman_ (Who, incidentally, happened to be correct.) THE WILD Ho, Spring calls clear a message.... The Grackle is not green.... The Mighty Mother Nature She knows just what I mean. The lilac and the willow The grass and violet They are my wild companions Where I was raised a pet. The secrets of great nature From childhood I have heard; Oh, I can tell a wild flower Swiftly from a wild bird; And Gwendolen and Marna And Myrtle (dead all three ... Among my wildwood sweethearts Was much mortality). If they my loves returning Might gather 'neath these boughs (Oh, they would sniff at pear-trees Who loved the Northern Sloughs). Their wild eternal whisper Would back me up, I ween: "This bird is not a Grackle: A Grackle is not green." _Grace Hazard and Hilda Conkling_ THEY SEE THE BIRDIE (Mrs. Conkling points maternally.) Oh, Hilda! see the little Bird! If you will watch, upon my word He will come out; a Veery[1] he As like an Oboe as can be: He shall be wingèd, with a tail, Mayhap a Beak him shall not fail! And I will tell him, "Birdie, oh, This is my Hilda, you must know-- And oh, what joy, if you but knew-- She shall make poetry on you!" (The Birdie obliges, whereupon Hilda recites obediently, while her mother, concealing herself completely behind the bird, takes dictation.) Oh, my lovely Mother, That is a Bird: Sitting on a Tree. I am a Little Girl Standing on the Ground. I see the Bird, The Bird sees me. _Bird!_ _Color of Grass!_ _I love my Mother_ _More than I do You!_ [Footnote 1: Note by the Collator: I do not pretend to explain the veery-complex of American poets. They all seemed possessed to rub it into the poor bird that he wasn't one.] _Theodosia Garrison_ (Who began cheerfully, but reduced her audience to tears, which she surveyed with complacence, by the third line.) A BALLAD OF THE BIRD DANCE OF PIERRETTE _Pierrette's mother speaks:_