BIRDS AND POETS 7 



In a like vein Coleridge sang ; — 



"'Tis the merry nightingale 

 That crowds and hurries and precipitates 

 With fast, thick warble his delicious notes." 



Keats's poem on the nightingale is doubtless 

 more in the spirit of the bird's strain than any 

 other. It is less a description of the song and more 

 the song itself. Hood called the nightingale 



" The sweet and plaintive Sappho of the dell." 



I mention the nightingale only to point my re- 

 marks upon its American rival, the famous mocking- 

 bird of the Southern States, which is also a nightin- 

 gale, — a night-singer, — and which no doubt excels 

 the Old World bird in the variety and compass of 

 its powers. The two birds belong to totally dis- 

 tinct families, there being no American species 

 which answers to the European nightingale, as there 

 are that answer to the robin, the cuckoo, the black- 

 bird, and numerous others. Philomel has the color, 

 manners, and habits of a thrush, — our hermit thrush, 

 — but it is not a thrush at all, but a warbler. I 

 gather from the books that its song is protracted 

 and full rather than melodious, — a capricious, long- 

 continued warble, doubling and redoubling, rising 

 and falling, issuing from the groves and the great 

 gardens, and associated in the minds of the poets 

 with love and moonlight and the privacy of seques- 

 tered walks. All our sympathies and attractions are 

 with the bird, and we do not forget that Arabia and 

 Persia are there back of its song. 



