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Unread 01-17-2010, 10:38 AM
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Spindleshanks Spindleshanks is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
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Default The Drongo's Reply

If you have read The Pongo Papers by Lord "Bosie" Douglas, this will need no further explanation, save to say that the Spangled Drongo (true!) is an Australian bird. If you haven't read it and The Duke of Berwick, you should.

http://www.archive.org/stream/pongop...giala_djvu.txt

The Drongo's Reply

Lord Bosie’s Cormorant is undepressed
By seventeen successive days of rain
?
Well, let his genial humour try the strain
of countless years without. Lord, may his nest
forever and eternally be blest
with shaglets, brood on brood, an endless chain.
Sir, pray the sun may never fry their brain
and may it shine politely where they rest.

The birds of Oz enjoy the gentle blast
of summers that make hills of iron wilt,
where only mad dogs venture out by day
and Englishmen retire to mansions built
round indoor pools. The endless summers past
would put your genial shags right off their lay.

oOOo

Last edited by Spindleshanks; 01-18-2010 at 05:28 AM. Reason: Modified L5 to regularise the metre.
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