A Big Curl

There Was a Little Girl

There was a little Girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

And when she was good,

She was very good indeed,

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The history of the poem:

Longfellow's second son Ernest says of this poem:  "It was while walking up and down with his second daughter, Alice, then a baby in his arms, that my father composed and sang to her the well-known lines."