"The 'Dropping-Song' of the Mocking-Bird"

The 'Dropping-Song' of the Mocking-Bird
To Mr. Maurice Thompson

Half rousing from my sleep by a far Northern sea, 

Blown through the perfumed Southern silences, I heard, 

Across my waking dreams, the tremulous, drowsy notes 

Of the enthralling nocturn of the mocking-bird. 

Then suddenly I heard a shivering of the leaves, 

Where leaves were not, and a most marvelous, full song 

Of lyric fire and rapt, delicious ecstasy, 

That throbbed within my veins, sweet, passionate, and long. 

So I have heard thy singer’s “dropping-song,” O South, 

Though I have never breathed the soft winds off thy sea! 

Even as a monk knows sweetness of a woman’s mouth 

In dreams―so have I known a bird’s love-ecstasy.

"The 'Dropping-Song' of the Mocking-Bird" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).

Maurice Thompson (1844-1901) was a Southern ornithologist, archer, fiction and nonfiction author, and poet.