Bird Biographies

								

Toward the Source of life and being."
Celia Thaxter mused on God's care of man and bird:


"For are we not God's children both,

    Thou, little Sandpiper, and I?"
Serenity and joy came to Edna Dean Proctor:


"My heart beside the bluebird, sings
And folds serene its weary wings."
Edward Rowland Sill voiced human need in his poem:

                            SPRING TWILIGHT


"Surely thus to sing, Robin,

    Thou must have in sight,
Beautiful skies behind the shower,

    And dawn beyond the night.


Would thy faith were mine, Robin!

    Then, though night were long
All its silent hours would melt

    Their shadow into song."
Beautiful memories that soothed pain came to Helen Hunt Jackson at the
mere shadow of a bird's wing across her darkened window. Bird-song bowed
Lucy Larcom's heart in reverence:


"Then will the birds sing anthems: for the earth and sky and air
Will seem a great cathedral, filled with beings dear and fair;
And long processions, from the time that bluebird notes begin
Till gentians fade, through forest-aisles will still move out and in."
All who appreciate Bryant's great poem "To a Waterfowl" may see God, not
only "flying over the hill with the bird," but as the unfailing guide of
the human soul.



    "He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

    Will lead my steps aright."
No more triumphant lines exist in literature than those in Browning's
"Paracelsus" which express faith in God's guidance of man and bird:



      "I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive: what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird."
The poets of the past generations may have written much about birds, but
it is quite probable that they possessed very little accurate
information regarding the service they render to the world. Longfellow
alone has bequeathed to us, in his beautiful "Birds of Killingworth," a
plea for the preservation of birds because of their practical use to man
as well as their æsthetic and spiritual value:


"Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,

    From his Republic banished without pity
The Poets; in this town of yours,

    You put to death, by means of a Committee,
The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,

    The street musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds, who make sweet music for us all
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.

                               · · · · · · ·
"Think of your woods and orchards without birds!

    Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams
As in an idiot's brain remembered words

    Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds

    Make up for the lost music, when your teams