He had been singing, but I had not heard his voice; He had been bothering the rest with song; But I, most comfortably far Within the city's stimulating jar Feeling for bus-conductors and for flats, And shop-girls buying too expensive hats, And silver-serviced dinners, And various kinds of pleasant urban sinners, And riding on the subway and the L, Had much beside his song to hear and tell. But one day (it was Spring, when poets ride Afield to wild poetic festivals) I, innocently making calls Was snatched by a swift motor toward his tree (Alas, but lady poets will do this to thee If thou art decorative, witty or a Man) And heard him sing, and on the grass did bide. But my whole day was sadder for his words, And I was thinner Because, in spite of my most careful plan I missed a very pleasant little dinner.... In short, unless well-cooked, I don't like Birds. _Sara Teasdale_ (Who got Miss Rittenhouse to read it for her.) AT AUTUMN I bend and watch the grackles billing, And fight with tears as I float by; O be a fowl for my heart's filling! O be a bird, yet never fly! _Ezra Pound_ (Mailed disdainfully by him from anywhere but America, and read prayerfully by a committee from Chicago.) RAINUV: A ROMANTIC BALLAD FROM THE EARLY BASQUE ... so then naturally This Count Rainuv I speak of (Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him; You are American poets, aren't you? That's rather awful ... I am the only American poet I could ever tolerate ... well, sniff and pass....) Therefore ... well, I knew Rainuv. (My P. G. course at Penn, you'll remember; A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto, But Provencal, mostly. Most don't go in for that.... You haven't, of course ... What, no Provencal? Well, of course, I know Rather more than you do. That's my specialty. But then--_Omnis Gallia est divisa_--but no matter. Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted Before ladies.... That's your rather amusing prudishness....) Well, this Rainuv, then, A person with a squint like a flash Of square fishes ... being rather worse than most Of the usual _literati_ Said, being carried off by desire of boasting That he knew all the mid-Victorians _Et ab lor bos amics:_ (He thought it was something to boast of.)