248 IN BIRD LAND. 



" The birds are here, for all the season 's late ; 

 They take the sun's height, an' don' never wait; 

 Soon 'z he officially declares it 's spring. 

 Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing, 

 An' th' ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear, 

 Can't by the music tell the time o' year." 



Sometimes a single line or phrase proclaims our 

 poet's loving familiarity with the feathered world, 

 and gives his verse an outdoor flavor that positively 

 puts a tonic into the appreciative reader's veins, 

 almost driving him out beneath the shining vault of 

 the sky ; as when the poet refers to " the cock's 

 shrill trump that tells of scattered corn ; " or to 

 " the thin-winged swallow skating on the air ; " or 

 laments because " snowflakes fledge the summer's 

 nest;" or remarks incidentally that the "cat-bird 

 croons in the lilac-bush ; " or that " the robin sings, 

 as of old, from the limb ; " or that " the single crow 

 a single caw lets fall ; " or asks, " Is a thrush 

 gurgling from the brake?" How vivid and full of 

 woodsy suggestion are the following lines from that 

 captivating poem, " Al Fresco " : — 



"The only hammer that I hear 

 Is wielded by the woodpecker, 

 The single noisy calling his 

 In all our leaf-hid Sybaris." 



Nothing could be more characteristic of wood- 

 peckerdom than that quatrain. Still more rhyth- 

 mical are the first six lines — a metrical sextette 

 that sing themselves — of the poem entitled " The 

 Fountain of Youth," — 



