Page:Lost Galleon (1867).djvu/100

98 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 neighborhood

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: