Isn't the evidence sufficient here of first rate poetic gifts, sensibility of an exceptional order? Contrast in so many ways with that perhaps more radiant and certainly more whimsical girl, with her rarest of flavours, she with her "whip of diamond, riding to meet the Earl"! I think geniuses like Keats or Shelley would have said "how do you do, poet?" to Adelaide Crapsey and her verse, lamenting also that she flew over the rainbowed edge of the dusk too soon, like the very moth over the garden wall, early in the evening. It is sure that had this poet been allowed her full quota of days, she would have left some handsome folios bright enough for any one caring for verse at its purest. Pity there was not time for another book at least, of her verses, to verify the great distinction conferred. She might have walked still more largely away with the wreaths of recognition. Not time for more books, instead of so much eternity at her bedside. She would surely have sent more words singing to their high places and have impressed the abundant output of the day with its superficiality by her seriousness. There is no trifling in these poetic things of hers. Trivial might some say who hanker after giantesque composition. Fragile are they only in the sense of size, only in this way are they small. Those who know the difficulties of writing poetic composition are aware of the task involved in creating such packed brevities. Emily Dickinson knew this power. "H. D." is another woman who understands the beauty of compactness. Superb sense of economy, of terseness the art calls for, excessive pruning and clipping. Singular that these three artists, so gifted in brevity were women. There is little, after all, in existence that warrants lengthy dissertation. Life itself is epigrammatic and brief enough. No volumes needed by way of explanation. The fascinating enigma diverts and perplexes everyone alike. The simple understand it best, or at least they seem to do so. Segregation, aloofness, spiritual imprisonment, which is another name for introspection, the looking out from bars of the caged house, all this discovers something through penetration. Walking with life is most natural, grazing its warm shoulder. There is little room for inquiry if one have the real feeling of life itself. Poetry is that which gleans most by keeping nearest to life. Books and firesides avail but little. Secretaries for the baggage of erudition do not enhance poetic values, they encumber them. Poetry is not declamation, it is not propaganda, it is breathing natural breaths. There is nothing mechanical about poetry excepting the affectation of forms. Poetry is the world's, it is everybody's. You count poetry by its essence, and no amount of studied effect, or bulging erudition will create that which is necessary, that which makes poetry what it is. The one essential is power to sing, and the intelligence to get it down with degrees of mastery or naturalness, which is one and the same