The Old Woman and her Two Servants

A beldam kept two spinning maids, / Who plied so handily their trades, / Those spinning sisters down below / Were bunglers when compared with these. / No care did this old woman know / But giving tasks as she might please. / No sooner did the god of day / His glorious locks enkindle, / Than both the wheels began to play, / And from each whirling spindle / Forth danced the thread right merrily, / And back was coil'd unceasingly. / Soon as the dawn, I say, its tresses show'd, / A graceless cock most punctual crow'd. / The beldam roused, more graceless yet, / In greasy petticoat bedight, / Struck up her farthing light, / And then forthwith the bed beset, / Where deeply, blessedly did snore / Those two maid-servants tired and poor. / One oped an eye, an arm one stretch'd, / And both their breath most sadly fetch'd, / This threat concealing in the sigh -- / 'That cursed cock shall surely die! ' / And so he did: -- they cut his throat, / And put to sleep his rousing note. / And yet this murder mended not / The cruel hardship of their lot; / For now the twain were scarce in bed / Before they heard the summons dread. / The beldam, full of apprehension / Lest oversleep should cause detention, / Ran like a goblin through her mansion. / Thus often, when one thinks / To clear himself from ill, / His effort only sinks / Him in the deeper still. / The beldam, acting for the cock, / Was Scylla for Charybdis' rock.[1]

[1]: Aesop.