By a sort of a blue and a glimmering light
Rode quite round his bedstead and full in his sight;
She rode in a carriage, that hight a birch broom,
And her breath breath’d the whiffings of gin through the room.
“I ask’d thee,” she cried, in a hoarse, hollow voice,
“For sixpence, thou gav’st not while yet in thy choice;
For punishment dread then, pretender, prepare,
Which e’en to repentance I now cannot spare.
“Know that she who so lately sustain’d your abuse,
Is thy mother, oh shame! and my name Mother Goose;