Pelicans

"The pelican came forth from the holy reed-beds. It came forth from the holy reed-beds. The wise pelican spent the day high in the skies. The pelican cried out in the sky: its singing was sweet and its voice was pleasing."

"Nance, delighting in her pelican, erected a lapis lazuli shrine, and set the holy pelican by her feet."

"Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,"

"A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican, He can take in his beak Enough food for a week But I'm damned if I see how the helican!"

"Nature's prime favourites were the Pelicans; High-fed, long-lived, and sociable and free."

"Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey, Alive and wriggling in the elastic net, Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks; Till, swoln with captures, the unwieldy burden Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land, These mighty hunters of the deep return'd. There on the cragged cliffs they perch'd at ease, Gorging their hapless victims one by one; Then full and weary, side by side, they slept, Till evening roused them to the chase again."

"The nursery of brooding Pelicans, The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd, And all the minor spots of rock and verdure, The abodes of happy millions, were no more."

"What, wouldst thou have me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own vitals?"

"By them there sat the loving pelican, Whose young ones, poison'd by the serpent's sting, With her own blood to life again doth bring."