31. The Difficult Rhyme

Write you an epigram? When you suggested it,
Friend, I was flattered that you had requested it.
Is it an honour? I pledge you my word on it,
If my poor verses a lustre conferred on it,
Gladly I'd mention your name from regard to you,
Had not your mother been cruelly hard to you.
Names so unmetrical, sesquipedalian,
Dry up the source of the fountain Castalian,
Melpomene will not whisper or mutter it,
None of her sisters nor Phoebus can utter it.
Get you another the Muses think better of,
This is a word I can't use the last letter of;
‘Hippodamê,’ little grace I can see in it,
Though, to be sure, I might end with the ‘e’ in it.
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Author of original: 
Martial
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