Somehow, there is a difference between Miss Moore's bird [the ostrich of "He 'Digesteth Harde Yron'"] and the bird of the Encyclopaedia. This difference grows…. The difference signalizes a transition from one reality to another. It is the reality of Miss Moore that is the individual reality. That of the Encyclopaedia is the reality of isolated fact. Miss Moore's reality is significant. An aesthetic integration is a reality.

Nowhere in the poem does she speak directly of the subject of the poem by its name. She calls it "the camel-sparrow" and the "the large sparrow Xenophon saw walking by a stream," "the bird," "quadruped-like bird" and

                     alert gargantuan
                 little-winged, magnificently
                 speedy running-bird.

This, too, marks a difference. To confront fact in its total bleakness is for any poet a completely baffling experience. Reality is not the thing but the aspect of the thing. At first reading, this poem...