TO most people who have leisure | |
| Raising poultry gives great pleasure; | |
| First, because the eggs they lay us | |
| For the care we take repay us; | |
| Secondly, that now and then | 5 |
| We can dine on roasted hen; | |
| Thirdly, of the hen’s and goose’s | |
| Feathers men make various uses. | |
| Some folks like to rest their heads | |
| In the night on feather beds. | 10 |
| One of these was Widow Tibbets, | |
| Whom the cut you see exhibits. | |
| Hens were hers in number three, | |
| And a cock of majesty. | |
| Max and Maurice took a view; | 15 |
| Fell to thinking what to do. | |
| One, two, three! as soon as said, | |
| They have sliced a loaf of bread, | |
| Cut each piece again in four, | |
| Each a finger thick, no more. | 20 |
| These to two cross-threads they tie, | |
| Like a letter X they lie | |
| In the widow’s yard, with care | |
| Stretched by those two rascals there. | |
| Scarce the cock had seen the sight | 25 |
| When he up and crew with might | |
| Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo;— | |
| Tack, tack, tack, the trio flew, | |
| Cock and hens, like fowls unfed, | |
| Gobbled each a piece of bread; | 30 |
| But they found, on taking thought, | |
| Each of them was badly caught. | |
| Every way they pull and twitch, | |
| This strange cat’s-cradle to unhitch; | |
| Up into the air they fly, | 35 |
| Jiminee, O Jimini! | |
| On a tree behold them dangling, | |
| In the agony of strangling! | |
| And their necks grow long and longer, | |
| And their groans grow strong and stronger. | 40 |
| Each lays quickly one egg more, | |
| Then they cross to th’ other shore. | |
| Widow Tibbets in her chamber, | |
| By these death-cries waked from slumber, | |
| Rushes out with bodeful thought: | 45 |
| Heavens! what sight her vision caught! | |
| From her eyes the tears are streaming: | |
| “Oh, my cares, my toil, my dreaming! | |
| Ah, life’s fairest hope,” says she, | |
| “Hangs upon that apple-tree.” | 50 |
| Heart-sick (you may well suppose), | |
| For the carving-knife she goes; | |
| Cuts the bodies from the bough, | |
| Hanging cold and lifeless now; | |
| And in silence, bathed in tears, | 55 |
| Through her house-door disappears. | |
| |
| This was the bad boys’ first trick, | |
| But the second follows quick. | |
| |
