Hilda began to write poems—or rather, to talk them—at the age of four. Since that time, she has created one hundred and fifty little verses, many of them astonishing in exactness of phrase and beauty of vision. Hilda “tells” her poem and her mother copies it down, arranges the line-divisions and reads it to the child for correction. Conceding a possible half-conscious shaping by Mrs. Conkling, the quality which shines behind all of Hilda’s little facets of loveliness is a straightforward ingenuousness, a childlike but sweeping fantasy. _Poems by a Little Girl_ (1920), published when Hilda was a little more than nine years old, is a detailed proof of this delightful quality. Every poem bears its own stamp of unaffected originality; “Water,” “Hay-Cock,” and a dozen others are startling in their precision and a power of painting the familiar in unsuspected colors. This child not only sees, feels and hears with the concentration of a child-artist, she communicates the results of her perceptions with the sensitivity of a master-craftsman. She hears a chickadee talking The way smooth bright pebbles Drop into water. Everything is extraordinarily vivid and fanciful to her keen senses. The rooster’s comb is “gay as a parade;” he has “pearl trinkets on his feet” and The short feathers smooth along his back Are the dark color of wet rocks, Or the rippled green of ships When I look at their sides through water. She observes: The water came in with a wavy look Like a spider’s web. It is too early for judgments—even for a prophecy. It is impossible to guess how much Hilda’s vision will be distorted by knowledge and the traditions that will accompany her growth. One can only hold one’s breath and hope for the preservation of so remarkable a talent. WATER The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers. The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water. What is water, That pours silver, And can hold the sky? HAY-COCK This is another kind of sweetness Shaped like a bee-hive: This is the hive the bees have left, It is from this clover-heap They took away the honey For the other hive! THE OLD BRIDGE