Little Miss Muffet.

Perhaps I may be justified in claiming your attention
If you're interested in fiction of a legendary kind.
My recital has a quality of whimsical invention
Which has always proved attractive to the adolescent mind.
You must picture then if possible a rural situation
(It's a thing you may have witnessed on the cinematograph)
And a heroine belonging to the younger generation—
For her age is in the neighbourhood of seven and a half
You will find, if you subject her to a close examination,
That the thing she is devoting her attention to is food.
On an elevated piece of graminosal vegetation
She's supported in a rather semisupine attitude.
She is nourishing the tissues of a healthy constitution
By the rapid deglutition and conversion into chyme
Of the mixture of an albumin in aqueous solution
With a renninised coagulum of caseinate of lime.
It was thus she was accosted by an appropinquent creature:
(In the order of Arachnida he's generally placed.)
Though of friendly disposition his repulsiveness of feature
Made her vanish from the scene with some considerable haste.
For the rest of her existence this obession terrified her,
Her descendants have inherited a tendency that way,
And perhaps it is the reason why the harmless little spider
Has so prevalent a horror for the woman of to-day.

—R.G.P.