"How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in chapter 2 of his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In 1998, surrealist artist Leonora Carrington made a painting and a sculpture of the same title, based on this poem.
[1] How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale!
[2] "How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a parody of the moralistic 1715 poem "Against Idleness and Mischief" by Isaac Watts,[3] which is what Alice was originally trying to recite.
In Carroll's parody, the crocodile's corresponding "virtues" are deception and predation, themes that recur throughout Alice's adventures in both books, and especially in the poems.