136 What Birds Have Done With Me 



The wind had fallen to a zephyr, the zephyr to a 

 sigh and the sigh had faltered and died and the 

 tremulous leaves of the poplars waited orders. 

 Suddenly, out of the strangeness, out of the gray- 

 ness, a part of the waiting silence, taking posses- 

 sion of the universe, a red bird, a flame of fire, 

 adding the visible presence of God to the mist- 

 enclosed tabernacle in the wilderness. For this 

 cause, the bare-footed boy had come into the for- 

 est he had mistakenly thought he had come in 

 search of cattle for he was a worshiper before 

 it would have been possible to put the shoes from 

 off his feet, had he had any on. Worship is a 

 mysterious cradle in which love sleeps and dreams 

 and grows strong and is made perfect. It was 

 only a Scarlet Tanager, but it swiftly led him 

 through all the stages and gradations of emotion, 

 and a radiant vision of childhood was transformed 

 into a tangible possession enriching all of life. 

 James Lane Allen and Gene Stratton-Porter have 

 each put their Cardinals into a volume, but my 

 Tanager and the dreams and fancies connected 

 with him are so much a part of the heart of me 

 and the great heart of Mother Nature that prose 

 seems inadequate and poetry itself could do little 

 more than call attention to something beyond it, 

 like allusions to dawns and sunsets. Though the 

 Scarlet Tanager did not make a great poet of me, 

 it put great poetry into the woods and some of 



