“Twenty pounds, I am certain, will buy me a cow,
Thirty geese and two turkeys,—eight pigs and a sow;
Now if these turn out well, at the end of a year,
I shall fill both my pockets with guineas, ‘tis clear.”
Forgetting her burden, when this she had said,
The maid superciliously tossed up her head;
When, alas for her prospects! her milk-pail descended,
And so all her schemes for the future were ended.
This moral, I think, may be safely attached,—
“Reckon not on your chickens before they are hatched.”