The Birds and Poets 51 



All day thy wings have fanned, 

 At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere. 

 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. 



Though the dark night is near. 



And soon that toil shall end; 

 Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest 

 And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend. 



Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest." 



Browning expressed the same faith in that 

 "power whose care" teaches his own path, as He 

 teaches the paths of the birds : 



"I see my way as birds their trackless way. 

 I shall arrive, what time, what circuit first 

 I ask not — * * * 



In sometime. His good time, I shall arrive : 

 He guides me and the bird. In His good time !" 



No other explanation than that given by these 

 poets has yet been offered for the unerring instinct 

 of the birds in seeking their old feeding grounds 

 and breeding haunts, often thousands of miles 

 removed from their winter base. 



Many interesting facts, however, have been 

 established with reference to the regular semi- 

 annual migration of many of the birds, but how 

 they are able successfully to traverse such great 

 distances, often oversea for many hundreds of 

 miles, and return to the same area season after 

 season, is one of nature's riddles. 



