According to Mary Sawyer's account, the lamb was a female. Sarah Hale's poem says it was a male. Sawyer is probably the source with reason to know. Wikimedia Commons Mary had a little lamb.

However, I don't have any background in poetry. So, I figured I'd learn from one of the masters: Mary Oliver ... She teaches about true rhyme, off-rhyme, and feminine rhyme and their uses.

The way Henry Hart viewed it, the poem he wrote and recited at Katherine A. Rowe’s inauguration as president of William & Mary on Feb. 8 in Kaplan Arena was part of a gift exchange. “I like to think ...