---

James Whitcomb Riley - The Nine Little Goblins
Work rating: Low

They all climbed up on a high board-fence--
  Nine little Goblins, with green-glass eyes--
Nine little Goblins that had no sense,
  And couldn`t tell coppers from cold mince pies;
    And they all climbed up on the fence, and sat--
    And I asked them what they were staring at.

And the first one said, as he scratched his head
  With a queer little arm that reached out of his ear
And rasped its claws in his hair so red--
  "This is what this little arm is fer!"
    And he scratched and stared, and the next one said,
    "How on earth do _you_ scratch your head?"

And he laughed like the screech of a rusty hinge--
  Laughed and laughed till his face grew black;
And when he choked, with a final twinge
  Of his stifling laughter, he thumped his back
    With a fist that grew on the end of his tail
    Till the breath came back to his lips so pale.

And the third little Goblin leered round at me--
  And there were no lids on his eyes at all--
And he clucked one eye, and he says, says he,
  "What is the style of your socks this fall?"
    And he clapped his heels--and I sighed to see
    That he had hands where his feet should be.

Then a bald-faced Goblin, gray and grim,
  Bowed his head, and I saw him slip
His eyebrows off, as I looked at him,
  And paste them over his upper lip;
    And then he moaned in remorseful pain--
    "Would--Ah, would I`d me brows again!"

And then the whole of the Goblin band
  Rocked on the fence-top to and fro,
And clung, in a long row, hand in hand,
  Singing the songs that they used to know--
    Singing the songs that their grandsires sung
    In the goo-goo days of the Goblin-tongue.

And ever they kept their green-glass eyes
  Fixed on me with a stony stare--
Till my own grew glazed with a dread surmise,
  And my hat whooped up on my lifted hair,
    And I felt the heart in my breast snap to
    As you`ve heard the lid of a snuff-box do.

And they sang "You`re asleep! There is no board-fence,
  And never a Goblin with green-glass eyes!--
`Tis only a vision the mind invents
  After a supper of cold mince-pies,--
And you`re doomed to dream this way," they said,--
"_And you sha`n`t wake up till you`re clean plum dead!_"
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.