314 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
of one on his back and the other on his breast; yes, and 
we might also add a touch beneath of the snow that falls 
from sky to earth.’ 
“For the rest, who dares write of the Bluebird, thinking 
to add a fresher tint to his plumage, a new tone to his melo- 
The Blue- ious voice, or a word of praise to his gentle life, 
bird that is as much a part of our human heritage and 
blended with our memories as any other attribute of home? 
“Not I, surely, for I know him too well, and each year 
feel myself more spellbound and mute by memories he 
awakens. Yet I would repeat his brief biography, lest 
there be any who, being absorbed by living inward, have 
not yet looked outward and upward to this poet of the 
sky and the earth and the fulness and goodness thereof. 
“For the Bluebird was the first of all poets, — even 
before man had blazed a trail in the wilderness or set up 
the sign of his habitation and tamed his thoughts to wear 
harness and travel to measure. And so he came to inherit 
the earth before man, and this, our country, is all the 
Bluebird’s country, for at some time of the year he roves 
about it from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from 
Mexico to Nova Scotia, though westward, after he 
passes the range of the Rocky Mountains, he wears a dif- 
ferent dress and bears other longer names. 
“Tn spite of the fact that our eastern Bluebird is a 
home-body, loving his nesting-haunt and returning to it 
year after year, he is an adventurous traveller. Ranging 
all over the eastern United States at some time in the 
season, this bird has its nesting-haunts at the very edge of 
the Gulf States and upward, as far north as Manitoba and 
Nova Scotia. 
