Oh no! I caught my strains
From Nature's freshest veins.

. . . . .

"He
A match for me!
No more than a wren or a chickadee!
Mine is the voice of the young and strong,
Mine the soul of the brave and free!"

This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds,
Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses
all the musical qualifications of this king of song, who has derived all
from Nature's self. Yes, reader, all!"

It will be interesting and instructive to compare the tributes
to the mocking-bird with Keats's `Ode to a Nightingale',
Shelley's `To a Skylark', and Wordsworth's `To the Skylark'.

Aside from Audubon's `Birds of America' and Ridgway's
`Manual of North American Birds', the student may consult with profit
Burroughs's `Birds and Poets', Thompson's `In the Haunts of the Mocking-bird'
(`The Atlantic', 54. 620, November, 1884), various articles
by Olive Thorne Miller in `The Atlantic' (vol. 54 on), and Winterfield's
`The Mocking-bird, an Indian Legend' (`The American Whig Review',
New York, 1. 497, May, 1845).

14. Wilde compares the mocking-bird to Yorick and to Jacques;
Meek, to Petrarch; Lanier, to Keats, in `To Our Mocking-bird',