With jest and gibe

Wilde was born in Dublin in 1789 and his family moved to America at age eight; he became a lawyer and politician, and also a poet…

Mockingbirds are  New World birds of which there are about seventeen different sorts, and are famous for copying and mimicking other birds and creatures such as insects and amphibians; they are usually loudly and repeat themselves over and over very quickly… Obviously the bird in my featured image, although very loud, is not a mocking bird.

To a Mocking Bird

Wing’d 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 gibe.
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!
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 Jacques complain,
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong,
And sighing for thy motley coat again.

Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847)