Uncumbered neighbour of our race! Thou only of thy clan Hast made thy haunt and dwelling-place Within the walls of man. Thy haughty wing, which rides the storm, Hath stooped to Earth’s desires, And round thy eery rises warm The smoke of human fires. Still didst thou come from lands afar In childhood days as now,— Yet alien as the planets are, And elfin-strange art thou. Thy little realm of quick delights, Fierce instincts, untaught powers— What unimagined days and nights Cut off that realm from ours! Thy soul is of the dawn of Earth, And thine the secrets be Of sentient being’s far-off birth And round-eyed infancy. With thee, beneath our sheltering roof, The starry Sphinx doth dwell, Untamed, eternally aloof And inaccessible! —Dora Read Goodale. THE RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD “The last and least of the four-winged mysteries is also the smallest of our birds, lacking a quarter of being four inches long. But it does not need size to proclaim its beauty any more than a glowing ruby or emerald; and indeed it wears both of these gems, the one on its throat and the other on its back. Its world is the garden where everything is brightest, its food nectar, and such little aphis as gather in it, and its home lashed by cobwebs to a slender branch, a fairy nest of plant, wool, and lichens, soft as feather down, wherein lie two eggs, white and opaque and glistening like some fresh-water pearls. “When on the wing it either darts about like a ray of feathered light, or else, poised before a deep-throated flower, remains apparently motionless, though its wings vibrate with the mechanical hum of a fly-wheel of perfect workmanship. “In spite of the fact that Father Humming-bird takes himself to parts unknown and leaves his mate to tend both eggs and birds, the mother is neither put out nor discouraged, and makes a model parent, who gathers and swallows the food for her tiny offspring and then, by a pumping process called regurgitation, brings it up and, taking no chances of spilling a drop, literally rams it into the little throat! This bird is to me the greatest mystery of all. It comes and it goes, but how does it endure the stress of weather and travel? Many a moth outspans it in breadth of wings. If the flight of the Wild Goose is wonderful in its courage, what of the Humming-bird? Is Puck of Pook’s Hill still alive, and has he feathered playfellows? THE HUMMING-BIRD Is it a monster bee, Or is it a midget bird, Or yet an air-born mystery That now yon marigold has stirred, And now on vocal wing To a neighbour bloom has whirred In an aëry ecstasy, in a passion of pilfering? Ah! ’tis the Humming-bird, Rich-coated one, Ruby-throated one, That is not chosen for song,