if you will listen to advice
you will avoid the cockatrice—
a caution i need hardly say
wholly superfluous to-day.
yet had you lived when they were rife
such warning might have saved your life.
to meet the cockatrice's eye
means certain death—and that is why
when i its features here portray
i make it look the other way.
o cockatrice! were you so mean
what must the henatrice have been!
