Where the Pelican Builds

Where the Pelican Builds
and other Poems

5th, March, 1881

Mary Hannay Foott

The unexplored parts of Australia are sometimes spoken of by the bushmen of Western Queensland as the home of the pelican, a bird whose resting place, so far as the writer knows, is seldom, if ever, found.

THE HORSES were ready, the rails were down,
    But the riders lingered still—
        One had a parting word to say,
    And one had his pipe to fill.
Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer,
    And one with a grief unguessed.
        “We are going,” they said as they rode away,
    “Where the pelican builds her nest!”

They had told us of pastures wide and green,
    To be sought past the sunset’s glow;
        Of rifts in the ranges by opal lit;
    And gold ’neath the river’s flow.
And thirst and hunger were banished words
    When they spoke of that unknown West;
        No drought they dreaded, no flood they feared,
    Where the pelican builds her nest!

The creek at the ford was but fetlock deep
    When we watched them crossing there;
        The rains have replenished it thrice since then,
    And thrice has the rock lain bare.
But the waters of Hope have flowed and fled,
    And never from blue hill’s breast
        Come back—by the sun and the sands devoured—
    Where the pelican builds her nest.

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