Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep,
    And can’t tell where to find them:
Let them alone, and they’ll come home,
    And bring their tails behind them.

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,
    And dreamt she heard them bleating:
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
    For they were still all fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook,
    Determin’d for to find them;
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
    For they’d left all their tails behind ’em.

It happen’d one day, As Bo-peep did stray,
    Into a meadow hard by;
That she espy’d their tails side by side,
    All hung on a tree to dry.

She heav’d a sigh and wip’d her eye,
    And over the hills went stump-o,
And tried what she cou’d, as a shepherdess shou’d,
    To tack each again to its rump-o.