I KNEW an old wife lean and poor,
Her rags scarce held together;
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather.
He held a goose upon his arm,

He utter'd rhyme and reason,
"Here, take the goose, and keep you
warm,

It is a stormy season."

She caught the white goose by the leg,
A goose-- 'twas no great matter.
The goose let fall a golden egg

With cackle and with clatter,

She dropt the goose, and caught the
pelf.

And ran to tell her neighbors;
And bless'd herself, and cursed herself

Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games

In some old nooks like this; till I, tired out

With cutting eights that day upon the pond,

To whom replied King Arthur, faint

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,

And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the woundod King.