C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)
Critic and Poet
N
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define—what is a bird;
To classify by rote and book, nor fail
To mark its structure, and to note the scale
Whereon its song might possibly be heard.
Thus far, no farther;—so he spake the word.
When of a sudden,—hark, the nightingale!
Oh, deeper, higher than he could divine,
That all-unearthly, untaught strain! He saw
The plain brown warbler, unabashed. “Not mine”
(He cried) “the error of this fatal flaw.
No bird is this,—it soars beyond my line:
Were it a bird, ’twould answer to my law.”