Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
II. To the Mocking-birdRichard Henry Wilde (17891847)
W
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe?
Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule
Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe:
Wit, sophist, songster, Y
Thou sportive satirist of Nature’s school;
To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe,
Arch-mocker 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 J
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong,
And sighing for thy motley coat again.