A weasel through a hole contrived to squeeze,
(She was recovering from disease,)
Which led her to a farmer’s hoard.
There lodged, her wasted form she cherish’d;
Heaven knows the lard and victuals stored
That by her gnawing perish’d!
Of which the consequence
Was sudden corpulence.
A week or so was past,
When having fully broken fast,
A noise she heard, and hurried
To find the hole by which she came,
And seem’d to find it not the same;
So round she ran, most sadly flurried;
And, coming back, thrust out her head,
Which, sticking there, she said,
“This is the hole, there can’t be blunder:
What makes it now so small, I wonder,
Where, but the other day, I pass’d with ease?”
A rat her trouble sees,
And cries, “But with an emptier belly;
You enter’d lean, and lean must sally.”