e dwelt a truer God in Shelley's heart, the _cor
cordium_ of him who wrote:

"I wish no living thing to suffer pain."

HOW BIRDS WERE MADE

Above his forests bowed the Spirit, dreaming
Of maize and wigwams and a tawny folk
Who should rejoice with him when autumn broke
Upon the woods in many-colored flame.
Pale birches, maples gleaming
In splendor of all gold and crimson tints,
And dark-green balsams with their purple hints
Of cones erect upon the stem, awoke
In his deep heart,
Though thought had yet no words,
Beauty no name,
Creative longing for a voice, a song
Blither than winds or brooklet's tinkling flow,
His own joy's counterpart.
He breathed upon the throng
Of wondering trees, and lo!
Their leaves were birds.

The birds do not forget, but love to fellow
The trees whose shining colonies they were;
Else wherefore should the scarlet tanager
Fling from the oak his proud, exultant flush
Of music? Why mid yellow
Sprays of the willow by her empty nest
Lingers the golden warbler? Softly drest
In autumn buffs and russets, chorister
Sweetest of all,
Angel of lonely eves,
The hermit thrush
Haunts the November woodland. In them bides
Memory of that far time, ere eyes of men
Had seen the tender fall
Of shadow or the tides
Of silver sunrise, when
The birds were leaves.

TAKA AND KOMA

"What madness is it to take upon us to know a thing by that it is
not? Shall we perswade our selves that wee know what thing a Camell
is, because wee know it is not a Frogge?"

--Barckley's _Felicitie of Man_. 1603.

To console me for the loss of the chicks, Joy-of-Life went into a
Boston bird-store one day and, in defiance of all her principles and
mine, bought me a Japanese robin. When she presented him, the daintiest
little fellow, mouse-color, with touches of red and gold on wings and
throat and the prettiest pink bill, I met her guilty look with one of
sheer astonishment.

"A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage,"

I quoted.

"But he was in a cage already," she weakly apologized, "and we'll be
very good to him."

"Good jailers!"

"But liberty here would be his undoing, and I can't take him over to
Japan. Come! It's time that you said thank-you."

But Taka, named after a Japanese boy of Joy-of-Life's earlier
acquaintan