Beetles and slow-worms crawled about,

And toads did squat demure;

From holes in the wainscoting mice peeped out,
Or a sly old rat with his whiskered snout;
And forty-feets, a full span long,

Danced in and out in an endless throng:

There ne'er has been seen such extravagant rout
From that time to this, I'm sure.

But the good St. Anthony kept his eyes
Fixed on the holy book;-

From it they did not sink nor rise;
Nor sights nor laughter, shouts nor cries,
Could win away his look.

A quaint imp sat in an earthen pot,

In a big-bellied earthen pot sat he:

Through holes in the bottom his legs outshot,

And holes in his sides his arms had got,

And his head came out through the mouth, God wot! A comical sight to see.

And he drummed on his belly so fair and round,

On his belly so round and fair;

And it gave forth a rumbling, mingled sound,
"Twixt a muffled bell and a growling hound,
A comical sound to hear:

And he sat on the edge of a table-desk,
And drummed it with his heels;

And he looked as strange as picturesque

As the figures we see in an arabesque,

Half hidden in flowers, all painted in fresque,

In Gothic vaulted ceils.

Then he whooped and hawed, and winked and grinned, And his eyes stood out with glee;

And he said these words, and he sung this song,

And his legs and his arms, with their double prong,
Keeping time with his tune as it galloped along,
Still on the pot and the table dinned

As birth to his song gave he.

"Old Tony, my boy! shut up your book, And learn to be merry and gay:

You sit like a bat in a cloistered nook,

Like a round-shoulder'd fool of an owl you look;

But straiten your back from its booby crook,

And more sociable be, I pray.

"Let us see you laugh, let us hear you sing;
Take a lesson from me, old boy!
Remember that life has a fleeting wing,
And then comes death, that stern old king,
So we'd better make sure of joy."

But the good St. Anthony bent his eyes
Upon the holy book:

He heard that song with a laugh arise,

But he knew that the imp had a naughty guise,
And he did not care to look.