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BIRDS AND POETS 33 
What fire burns in that little chest, 
So frolic, stout, and self-possest ? 
Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; 
Ashes and jet all hues outshine. 
Why are not diamonds black and gray, 
To ape thy dare-devil array ? 
And I affirm, the spacious North 
Exists to draw thy virtue forth. 
I think no virtue goes with size; 
The reason of all cowardice 
Is, that men are overgrown, 
And, to be valiant, must come down 
To the titmouse dimension.’ 
° e. e e e e 
“T think old Cesar must have heard 
In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, 
And, echoed in some frosty wold, 
Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. 
And I will write our annals new 
And thank thee for a better clew. 
I, who dreamed not when I came here 
To find the antidote of fear, 
Now hear thee say in Roman key, 
Pean! Veni, vidi, vici.” 
A late bird-poem, and a good one of its kind, is 
Celia Thaxter’s “Sandpiper,” which recalls Bryant’s 
““Water-fowl” in its successful rendering of the 
spirit and atmosphere of the scene, and the distinct-_ 
ness with which the lone bird, flitting along the 
beach, is brought before the mind. It is a woman’s 
or a feminine poem, as Bryant’s is characteristically 
a man’s. 
The sentiment or feeling awakened by any of the 
aquatic fowls is preéminently one of loneliness. The 
wood duck which your approach starts from the 
pond or the marsh, the loon neighing down out of 
