The Cecil Whig

My Mocking-Bird.
Mocking-bird: mocking-bird, swinging high
Aloft in your gilded cage,
The clouds are hurrying over the sky,
The wild winds fiercely rage.
But soft and warm is the air you breathe
Up there with the tremulous ivy wreath:
And never an icy blast can chill
The perfumed silence sweet and still.
Mocking-bird! Mocking-bird! from your
throat
Breaks forth no flood of song.
Nor even a perfect, golden note.
Triumphant, glad, and strong!
But now and then a pitiful wail
Like the plaintive sigh of the dying gale
Comes from that arching breast of thine,
Swinging up there with the ivy vine.
Mocking-bird! Mocking-bird! well I know
Your heart is far away,
Where the golden stars of the jasmine
glow,
And the roses bloom alway!
For your cradle-nest was softly made
In the depth of a blossoming myrtle's
shade;
And you heard the chant of the southern
seas,
Borne inland by the favoring breeze.
But ah, my beautiful mocking-bird!
Should I bear you back again,
Never would song of yours be heard
Echoing through the glen
For once, ah! once, at the dawn of day.
You waked to the roar of the deadly fray,
When the terrible clash of armed foes
Startled the vale from its dim repose!
At first you sat on a swaying bough,
Mocking the bugle's blare,
Fearless and free in the fervid glow
Of the heated, sulphurous air:
Your voice rang out like a trumpet's note
With a martial ring in its upward float
And stern men smiled, for you seemed to be
Cheering them on to victory
But at length, as the awful day wore on,
You flew to the tree-top high,
And sat like a spectre grim and wan,
Outlined against the sky:
Sat silently watching the fiery fray
Till heaps upon heaps the Blue and Gray
Lay together, a silent band,
Whose souls had passed to the shadowy
land.
Ah, my mocking-bird! swinging there
Under the ivy vine,
You still remember the bugle's blare,
And the blood poured forth like wine
The soul of song in your gentle breast
Died in that hour of fierce unrest,
When, like a spectre grim and wan
You watched to see how the strife went on
JuLIA C. R. Dorr, in Harper's Magazine
for August.