Chinese feelings swift discerning Without all this time and fuss Let us eat that bird, thus learning Of the Him in Us! _Amy Lowell_ (Fixing her glasses firmly on the rest of the Poetry Society in a way which makes them with difficulty refrain from writhing.) OISEAURIE Glunk! I toss my heels up to my head ... That was a bird I heard say glunk As I walked statelily through my extensive, expensive English country estate In a pink brocade with silver buttons, a purple passementerie cut with panniers, a train, and faced with watered silk: But it Is dead now! (The bird) Probably putrescent And green.... I scrabble my toes ... Glunk! _Edgar Lee Masters_ (Making a statement which you may take or leave, but convincing you entirely.) IMRI SWAZEY I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry; Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway? I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears. But I chucked a stone, anyhow, And it ricocheted and hit my head, And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it And there I was, dead. And dead with me were all the improper things I'd got out of the servants about their employers Bringing in the laundry; But the grackle sings on. Sing forever, O grackle! I died, knowing lots of things _you_ don't know! _Edwin Arlington Robinson_ (He mutters wearily in an undertone.) RAMBUNCTO Well, they're quite dead, Rambuncto; thoroughly dead. It was a natural thing enough; my eyes Stared baffled down the forest-aisles, brown and green, Not learning what the marks were. Still, who learns? Not I, who stooped and picked the things that day, Scarlet and gold and smooth, friend ... smooth enough! And she's in a vault now, old Jane Fotheringham, My mother-in-law; and my wife's seven aunts, And that cursed bird that used to sit and croak Upon their pear-tree--they threw scraps to him-- My wife, too. Lord, that was a curious thing! Because--"I don't like mushrooms much," I said, And they ate all I picked. And then they died. But ... Well, who knows it isn't better that way? It's quieter, at least.... Rambuncto--friend-- Why, you're not going?... Well--it's a stupid year, And the world's very useless.... Sorry.... Still The dusk intransience that I much prefer Leaves place for little hope and less regret. I don't suppose he'd care, to stay to dine Under the circumstances.... What's life for? _Robert Frost_ (Rather nervously, retreating with haste in the wake of Mr. Robinson as soon as he had finished.) THE BIRD MISUNDERSTOOD There was a grackle sat on our old pear tree-- Don't ask me why--I never did really know; But he made my wife and me feel, for really the very first time We were out in the actual country, hindering things to grow;