And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set, Live buds that warbled like a rivulet Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew, Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue, Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles-- Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measured miles Innumerable over land and sea With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee, They filled that dark old oak with jubilee, Foretelling in delicious roundelays Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays, How they should fashion nests, mate helping mate, Of milkweed flax and fern-down delicate, To keep sky-tinted eggs inviolate. Listening to those blithe notes, I slipped once more From lyric dawn through dreamland's open door, And there was God, Eternal Life that sings Eternal joy, brooding all mortal things, A nest of stars, beneath untroubled wings. KATHARINE LEE BATES WITCHERY Out of the purple drifts, From the shadow sea of night, On tides of musk a moth uplifts Its weary wings of white. Is it a dream or ghost Of a dream that comes to me, Here in the twilight on the coast, Blue cinctured by the sea? Fashioned of foam and froth-- And the dream is ended soon, And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth Comes now the moth-white moon! FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN THE SPRING BEAUTIES The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them, But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly. The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes, Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes; And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass, They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass. All because the buff-coat Bee Lectured them so solemnly:-- "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" HELEN GRAY CONE THE MOCKING-BIRD He didn't know much music When first he come along; An' all the birds went wonderin' Why he didn't sing a song. They primped their feathers in the sun, An' sung their sweetest notes; An' music jest come on the run From all their purty throats! But still that bird was silent In summer time an' fall; He jest set still and listened, An' he wouldn't sing at all! But one night when them songsters Was tired out an' still, An' the wind sighed down the valley An' went creepin' up the hill;