O’er a rough, roaring cataract hangs by a hair,
Now suddenly sinks in a bottomless deep,
And starts, half awake with a shriek of despair!
Thus rolls like a porpoise o’er billows of down,
Grows big as a mammoth, and fat as a seal,
Lives a plague to his friends, or a charge to the town,
And dies to make worms a most plentiful meal.
Ye sons of Columbia, shun the syren of sloth
For if you submit to her leaden control,
You will find, when too late, like a venomous moth,