BUSY POET.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16320, 8 January 1921, Page 2

BUSY POET.

VERSES TO HER MOTHER

“SWEETS OF MY HEART.” Following Daisy Ashford and her sister. Angie, with their delightfully amusing stories, written at the age of nine, Opal Wbjteiey, with her astonishingly clever diary of her sixth and seventh years, and the nine-year-old writer of remarkable letters discovered by Mr Magazine, a. little girl poetess has just had a volume published. Called “ Poems by a Little Girl, 5 ' lb© book contains 112 bits of verse spoken by Hilda Conkling between the ages of four and' nine and written down by her mother, who is assistant professor of English at Smith College, Northampton, Mass, TT.S. Tlie publishers vouch for the authenticity of the poems, which Miss Amy Lowell, the American poetess, describes as “ perfectly instinctive ” and “ pages of real achievement.” Rosy plum-tree, think of me When Spring comes down the world, sang Hilda Conkling when she was four, and the same colour of expression creeps delightfully into much of her verse. But the real joy in it lies in the fact that she is always a child telling of things as she sees them ; she never has to look back to try to recapture elusive ideas and misty scenes of long THE FLOWER-DANCE. Here is a picture that a. man or woman, throwing the mind back, could not hare caught. Tho garden is full of flower* AH dancins round and round. .Tohn-flowers, Mary-flowera, Polly-flowers, Cauli-flowers, They dance round and round And they bow down and down To a black-eyed daisy. Hilda Conkliug knows little or nothing of metre and rhyme, and thus unrestricted sh© has sung her way through babyhood. Many of her songs are to her mother, whom she beautifully calls “ Sweets-of-niy-heart.” I will sing you a song, Swoets-of-iny-heart, With love in it (How 1 love you!) And a rose to swing in the wind, The wind that swings roses! FAIRIES, BIRDS AND BROOKS. All the things that children love she has put into her spontaneous verses--fairies, brooks, birds, the moon which is peeped at from bed ; the Sandman who comes and makes children sleepy. Here Is a delightful scrap of fancy : I. cannot see fairies. I dream of them. There is no fairy'cau hide from me ; T keep on dreaming till I find him : There you arc. Primrose! I eee you, Black ’Wing!