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Category: Funny Animal Poems
       Classic humorous and funny poems about animals, snakes, lions, cats, birds, frogs, and more.

  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 whet
    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:
"Where's that specimen pin that I gaily did win
    In raffle, and gave unto you,
                                        Fortescue?"
    No word spoke the guilty Emeu!

"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
    "I'm innocent as that Emeu!"

                                    Bret Harte.


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