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!