Declaration of Independence by Woolcott Gibbs

Declaration of Independence*
by Wolcott Gibbs

He will just do nothing at all
He will just sit there in the noon-day sun
And when they speak to him;-
he will not answer them,
because he does not wish to.
And when they tell him to eat his dinner,
he will just laugh at them.
And he will not take his nap,
because he does not care to.
He will just sit there in the noonday sun.
He will go away and will play with the panda.
And when they come to look for him,
he will stick them with spears
And put them in the garbage and put the cover on.
And he will not get out in the fresh air,
nor eat his vegetable,
And hw will grow thin as a marble.
He would just do nothing at all.
He will just sit there in the noon-day sun.

Pete Seager set it to music.

* Wolcott Gibbs heard this sung one evening by his four-year-old son in the bathtub, and got the words printed in The New Yorker.