BIEDS 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 buffoonerj' 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 scoffing 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 



