BIRDS AND POETS 9 
priate verse. But so far only one Southern poet, 
Wilde, has accredited the bird this song. This he 
has done in the following admirable sonnet: — 
TO THE MOCKINGBIRD. 
Winged mimic of the woods ! thou motley fool ? 
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe ? 
Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule 
Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. 
Wit — sophist — songster — Yorick of thy tribe, 
Thou sportive satirist of Nature’s school, 
To thee the palm of scofling we ascribe, 
Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule ! 
For such thou art by day — but all night long 
Thou pour’st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, 
As if thou didst in this, thy moonlight song, 
Like to the melancholy Jaques, complain, 
Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, 
And sighing for thy motley coat again. 
Aside from this sonnet, the mockingbird has got 
into poetical literature, so far as I know, in only 
one notable instance, and that in the page of a poet 
where we would least expect to find him, —a bard 
who habitually bends his ear only to the musical 
surge and rhythmus of total nature, and is as little 
wont to turn aside for any special beauties or points 
as the most austere of the ancient masters. I refer 
to Walt Whitman’s “Out of the cradle endlessly 
rocking,” in which the mockingbird plays a part. 
The poet’s treatment of the bird is entirely ideal 
and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is 
altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet 
it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird- 
song — the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and 
