is cheerful
Across the sea:
White nets are beside the water
Where ships sail by.
The mountains begin to get blue,
The Dutch girls begin to sing,
The windmills begin to whirl.
Then night comes
The mountains turn dark gray
And faint away into night.
Not a bird chirps his song.
All is drowsy,
All is strange,
With the moon and stars shining round the world:
The wind stops,
The windmills stop
In Holland . . .

FOUNTAIN-TALK

Said the fountain to its clear bed,
"You might flow faster!
I am sprinkling my best, every day,
But ice is holding you fast.
Can't you get out?
Can't you lift yourself with sun?
I am tired waiting for slow cold water
To fling about the air:
Can't you wake yourself up?"
But the fountain-basin murmured softly
"Sleep . . . sleep . . .
Sleep . . . sleep . . .
You with your talking and talking!
Hush . . . hush . . .
I hear the bird-sandman!"

POPLARS

The poplars bow forward and back;
They are like a fan waving very softly.
They tremble,
For they love the wind in their feathery branches.
They love to look down at the shallows,
At the mermaids
On the sandy shore;
They love to look into morning's face
Cool in the water.

THE TOWER AND THE FALCON

There was a tower, once,
In a London street.
It was the highest, widest, thickest tower,
The proudest, roundest, finest tower
Of all towers.
English men passed it by:
They could not see it all
Because it went above tree-tops and clouds.

It was lonely up there where the trees stopped
Until one day
A blue falcon came flying.
He cried:
"Tower! Do you know you are the highest, finest, roundest,
The tallest, proudest, greatest,
Of all the towers
In all the world?"

He went away.
That night the tower made a new song
About himself.

THOUGHTS

My thoughts keep going far away
Into another country under a different sky:
My thoughts are sea-foam and sand;
They are apple-petals fluttering.

POEM-SKETCH IN THREE PARTS

(Made for the picture on the jacket of the
Norwegian book, The Great Hunger, by Johan Bojer)

I

THE ROLLING IN OF THE WAVE

It was