"Hey, rub-a-dub!

Three maids in a tub!

And who do you think was there?

The butcher, the baker,

The candlestick-maker,

And all of them gone to the fair."

Strong hands are in the washing-tubs;

Gay heads, the labor scorning,

Make holiday between the rubs,

And sport of Monday morning.

Three maids? That's your arithmetic.

The child that met the poet

Would still to her own counting stick:

"We 're seven; I surely know it!"

The boatman ferried over three

Across the haunted river;

And only guessed it by his fee,

And wondered at the giver.

And Betsey, Jane, and Mary Ann,—

If more your sense discovers?

Well, rub your insight if you can,

And reckon up the lovers!

Count Jane with her stout cleaver knight,

And Betsey with the baker;

And Mary Ann in dreamy light

Beside the candle-maker.

Yet of the six no soul is there,

For all your wakened vision!

In the charmed circle of the Fair

They walk their Fields Elysian!

The work goes on by board and bench,—

Hard tax of human sinning,—

But hearts thro' labor-chinks still wrench

Some joy of their beginning.

In the close limit that confines

Our getting and our giving,

Unless we read between the lines,

What should we do with living?