AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 103 



On glittering wing, erect and bright, 



With arrowy speed he darts aloft, ' 



As though his soul had taken its flight, 



In that last strain, so sad and soft, 



And he would call it back to life, 



To mingle in the mimic strife. 



And ever, to each fitful lay, 



His frame in restless motion wheels, 



As though he would indeed essay 



To act the ecstacy he feels, 



As though his very feet kept time 



To that inimitable chime! — "To the Mockingbird," 



sang Fortunatas Cosby (1826), a "Yale man," but a Kentucky bard. 

 At about the same time, Richard Henry Wilde, "A ? son of the south", 

 was professor of law in the University of Louisiana. He was an exten- 

 sive European traveller, and while abroad, doubtless after listening to 

 Edmund Spencer's "The Nightingale is Sovereign of Song," and read- 

 ing Shelley's lines, he wrote these fourteen lines, 



To the Mockingbird. 



Wing'd mimic of the woods; thou motley fool, 

 Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? 

 Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule 

 Pursue thy fellows with jest and jibe; 

 Wit, sophist songster, Yorick of thy tribe, 

 Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school; 

 To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, 

 Arch-mocker 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, folly, vice and wrong, 

 And singing for thy motley coat again. 



I imagine that Mr. Wilde was then longing for his old haunts amid 

 the oleanders of the Mississippi. In any event, he certainly knew 

 America's (ought to be) national bird, which is it de jure. 



There could be, under the conditions, nothing more delicately yet 

 classically impressive than to delight and enchant this world's millions 

 at the St. Louis Fair next summer and fall with the songs of a score or 



