se
intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone to stone seeking
its food, the hind part of its body "teetering" up and down, its soft
gray color blending it with the pebbles and the rocks, or else skimming
up or down the stream on its long, convex wings, uttering its shrill
cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of the sea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's
poem is as much for the dweller inland as for the dweller upon the
coast:--

THE SANDPIPER

Across the narrow beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,--
One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud black and swift across the sky;
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white lighthouses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,--
One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
Or flash of fluttering drapery;
He has no thought of any wrong;
He scans me with a fearless eye.
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

Others of our birds have been game for the poetic muse, but in most
cases the poets have had some moral or pretty conceit to convey, and
have not loved the bird first. Mr. Lathrop preaches a little in his
pleasant poem, "The Sparrow," but he must some time have looked upon the
bird with genuine emotion to have written the first two stanzas:--

"Glimmers gay the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to wicket,
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate:
Who, with meekly folded wing,
C