TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL. While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls. "Tell us of thy food, those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,— Cuttle-fish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle. 79 66 'Speak, thou awful vestige of the Earth's creation,— Solitary fragment of remains organic! Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence, Speak! thou oldest primate !" Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, And, from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration; "Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County, But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces THE BALLAD OF THE emeu. O SAY, have you seen at the Willows so green,— So charming and rurally true, A singular bird, with a manner absurd, Which they call the Australian Emeu? Have you Ever seen this Australian Emeu? It trots all around with its head on the ground, Or erects it quite out of your view; And the ladies all cry, when its figure they spy, O, what a sweet pretty Emeu ! Oh! do Just look at that lovely Emeu! One day to this spot, when the weather was hot, Came Matilda Hortense Fortescue; And beside her there came a youth of high name,— Augustus Florell Montague: The two Both loved that wild, foreign Emeu. With two loaves of bread then they fed it, instead Of the flesh of the white cockatoo, Which once was its food in that wild neighbourhood Where ranges the sweet Kangaroo ; That too Is game for the famous Emeu! Old saws and gimlets but its appetite whets Like the world-famous bark of Peru; There's nothing so hard that the bird will discard, And nothing its taste will eschew, That you Can give that long-legged Emeu! The time slipped away in this innocent play, When up jumped the bold Montague : THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU. "Where's that specimen pin that I gaily did win In raffle, and gave unto you, Fortescue ?" No word spoke the guilty Emeu ! 83 "Quick! tell me his name whom thou gavest that same, Ere these hands in thy blood I imbrue !" "Nay, dearest," she cried, as she clung to his side, "I'm innocent as that Emeu!" "Adieu !" He replied, "Miss M. H. Fortescue!" Down she dropped at his feet, all as white as a sheet, As wildly he fled from her view; He thought 'twas her sin, for he knew not the pin Had been gobbled up by the Emeu ; All through The voracity of that Emeu! |