One day there came to the fishing village
    An individual bent on pillage;
    But a robber whom true scientific feeling
    May find guilty of picking, but not of stealing. 
      He picked the yellow poppies on the cliffs;
      He picked the feathery seaweeds in the pools;
      He picked the odds and ends from nets and skiffs;
      He picked the brains of all the country fools. 
    He dried the poppies for his own herbarium,
    And caught the Lobsters for a seaside town aquarium.

“Tank No. 20” is deep,
“Tank No. 20” is cool,
For clever contrivances always keep
The water fresh in the pool;
And a very fine plate-glass window is free to the public view,
Through which you can stare at the passers-by and the passers-by
stare at you. 
Said my hero, “This is a great variety
From those dull old rocks, where we’d no society.”

For the primal cause of incidents,
One often hunts about,
When it’s only a coincidence
That matters so turned out. 
And I do not know the reason
Or the reason I would tell—­
But it may have been the season—­
Why my hero chose this moment for casting off his shell. 
He had hitherto been dressed[1]
(And so had all the rest)
In purplish navy blue from top to toe! 
But now his coat was new,
It was of every shade of blue
Between azure and the deepest indigo;
And his sisters kept telling him, till they were tired,
There never was any one so much admired.

My hero was happy at last, you will say? 
So he was, dear Reader—­two nights and a day;
Then, as he and his relatives lay,
Each at the mouth of his mock
Cave in the face of a miniature rock,
They saw, descending the opposite cliff,
By jerks spasmodic of elbows stiff;
Now hurriedly slipping, now seeming calmer,
With the ease and the grace of a hog in armour,
And as solemn as any ancient palmer,

                    No less than nine

          Exceedingly fine

And full-grown lobsters, all in a line. 
But the worst of the matter remains to be said. 
These nine big lobsters were all of them red.[2]
And when they got safe to the floor of the tank,—­
For which they had chiefly good luck to thank,—­
They settled their cumbersome coats of mail,
And every lobster tucked his tail
Neatly under him as he sat
In a circle of nine for a cosy chat. 
They seemed to be sitting hand in hand,
As shoulder to shoulder they sat in the sand,
And waved their antennae in calm rotation,
Apparently holding a consultation. 
But what were the feelings of Master Blue Shell? 
Oh, gentle Reader! how shall I tell?