By them there sat the loving pelican, Whose young ones, poisond by the serpents sting, With her own blood to life again doth bring. DraytonNoahs Flood.
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 Cloggd their slow flight, as heavily to land, These mighty hunters of the deep returnd. There on the cragged cliffs they perchd 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. MontgomeryPelican Island. Canto IV. L. 141.
The nursery of brooding Pelicans, The dormitory of their dead, had vanishd, And all the minor spots of rock and verdure, The abodes of happy millions, were no more. MontgomeryPelican Island. Canto VI. L. 74.