Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray [1]
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
What e'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.
Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. [11]
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain:
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree?

____
1877.



Notes: The Mocking-bird


Besides this sonnet Mr. Lanier wrote a longer `To Our Mocking-bird',
consisting of three sonnets, and `Bob', a charming account, in prose,
of the life and death of the bird apostrophized.

In his `Birds and Poets' (Boston, 1877), Mr. John Burroughs says
that he knows of only two noteworthy poetical tributes to the mocking-bird,
those by Whitman and by Wilde, both of which he quotes.