It began in a morning journal
When gooseberries were due,
The subject seemed eternal,
So many scribes it drew.
And in every evening column
It made a great to-do,
Sub-editors so solemn
Just adding thereunto.
In the London Correspondence
'Twas written up anew,
And then a fog came on dense
And hid me quite from view.
And some said they had heard it
From keepers in the Zoo,
While others who averred it
Had seen that cockatoo.
It lived, my little fable,
I chuckled and I crew
As at my very table
Friends twisted it askew.
It leapt across the Channel,
A bounding kangaroo.
It did not shrink like flannel
But gained in size and hue.
It appeared in French and Spanish
With errors not a few,
In Russian, Greek and Danish,
Inaccurately, too.
And waxing more romantic
With every wind that blew,
It crossed the broad Atlantic
And grew and grew and grew.
At last, like boomerang, it
Sped back across the blue,
And tall and touched with twang, it
Appeared whence first it flew.