THE CONVENTION



From the Queen Bee mother, the mother Beast, and the mother Fowl in the
fen,
A call went up to the human world, to Woman, the mother of men.
The call said, 'Come: for we, the dumb, are given speech for a day,
And the things we have thought for a thousand years we are going at last to
say.'

Much they marvelled, these women of earth, at the strange and curious call,
And some of them laughed, and some of them sneered, but they answered it
one and all,
For they wanted to hear what never before was heard since the world began -
The spoken word of Beast and Bird, and the message it held for Man.

'A plea for shelter,' the woman said, 'or food in the wintry weathers,
Or a foolish request that we be dressed without their furs or feathers.
We will do what we can for the poor dumb things, but they must be
sensible.' Then
The meeting was called and a she-bear stood and voiced the thought of the
fen.

'Now this is the message we give to you' (it was thus the she-bear spake):
'You the creatures of homes and shrines, and we of the wold and brake,
We have no churches, we have no schools, and our minds you question and
doubt,