A zealous locksmith died of late,
And did arrive at heaven gate,
He stood without and would not knock,
Because he meant to pick the lock.

This anonymous epigram turns on a neat occupational irony: even at Heaven’s gate, the locksmith cannot abandon his habitual craft. Refusing to “knock” (the ordinary, humble request for entry), he prefers to “pick the lock,” implying a sly confidence that skill can substitute for permission. The joke lightly satirizes professional deformation—how a trade can become an identity—and it also gestures at moral themes: the temptation to circumvent rules, the persistence of earthly habits after death, and the difference between rightful admission and illicit entry. Its sing-song couplets place it in the tradition of short comic verse and moralizing wit.