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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Mocking-Bird

  • Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,
  • Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o’er the water,
  • Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
  • That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
  • Longfellow.

  • Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool!
  • Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe?
  • Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule
  • Pursue thy fellows still 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!
  • Robert Wilde, D.D.

  • Living echo, bird of eve,
  • Hush thy wailing, cease to grieve;
  • Pretty warbler, wake the grove
  • To notes of joy, to songs of love.
  • Thomas Morton.