The Road-Runner

A GRAY-STREAKED road-runner scurrying by In a sage-brush valley, I happened to spy,-- Long-legged and thin-billed, with a stretched-out tail, And a comical body as thin as a rail!

Oh surely, I thought, what a sad slim fowl Compared with his neighbor the well-fed owl! Till he pounced on a snake with a rapturous squeak, And rapped the poor reptile a clip with his beak.

Then why is he nothing but feathers and skin? Is it running so fast that has worn him so thin? Just think what would happen, my lad, to you, If you ran all day like a ground cuckoo.