A tidy little character study in four lines: good when good, horrid when not. Often credited to Longfellow, though nobody is entirely sure. The stark before-and-after makes it satisfying to say aloud, with a wag of the finger saved for the last word.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.
About this rhyme
Text matches exactly: very, very good vs horrid, four lines. · The popular story that Longfellow wrote this for his daughter is unverified folklore and is correctly not repeated here.
Two ends of the same child in four lines: very, very good one moment, horrid the next, with nothing in between. It's a character sketch rather than a story, the exaggeration doing all the work. Read the 'very, very good' slowly and let 'horrid' land like a trapdoor.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition