The h2g2 Literary Corner: Bob the Mockingbird
Created | Updated Aug 3, 2015
The literary corner goes all poetical about mockingbirds.
A word of explanation: In her recently published novel Go Set a Watchman, Alabama writer Harper Lee mentions the poet Sidney Lanier in connection with crossing the Chattahootchee River by train. I looked up the poem, and you can read it, too. Now, it is up to the reader to decide whether, as a poet, Lanier is an ornament to the South, or its answer to William Topaz McGonagall. But further research turned up this poem and picture in the book Bob, which tells the story of the Lanier family's pet mockingbird. Now, a mockingbird is a beautiful thing, much as it may annoy late sleepers (particularly if it's been hanging around people with irritating mobile ringtones), but whether this poem is a thing of beauty is a matter of dispute. Perhaps you will find it so moving that you memorise it in order to recite it 'at morn in brake or bosky avenue'. Or not.
Bob the Mockingbird
