Poet Stephen Moylan Bird was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1897. From the first he showed himself extremely sensitive and high-spirited, with a passionate love of wild nature and animals. Shy of outsiders, he was devoted to his family, and was taught at home for several years. When at last he went to school he at once developed into a brilliant student and a tremendous reader. In many respects he was as healthy and normal as possible. He passed duly through the period of craze for trains and boats and emerged into baseball. Always of splendid physique, he became devoted to swimming and bicycling. He was fearless and hot-tempered, especially in regard to any kind of cruelty. Of the forty or so of Bird's poems that give him at his best, none is over thirty lines long. Almost all are imaginative lyrics of wild nature: the mountains, the woods, and especially the sea.