Classic Poem

Oh sweet passer, pause, be wise!
We have flowers to charm thine eyes.
Enter, passer, stop, sweet stranger, enter in and taste our wares!
We have rosy auroch-flesh
From the green oases fresh,
We have melons from Egesta and the juicy Sulci pears.

In our baskets thou wilt find
Hottest spice of every kind,
With rich paste to rub the body when the sun is fierce by day.
They are delicate and sweet,
Made of myrrh, and wine, and wheat,
Ay! with sulphur, and pure galbanum, and the milk of bitches gray.

We have fat and sweetened moles;
And rich safran in clay bowls;
We have locusts fried and crackling with a savor of the palms;
We have lobsters and small fish
To prepare a dainty dish,
And young dogs, made sleek with olives, stuffed with annis-bread and balms.

Taste our cool Campanian wine,
Fit for any god divine!
Taste our figs from Agrigentum and our shell-fish from Hagour.
From Selimis we have snails
Breathing still among the pails,
And we catch the thorny porcupine in ravine and on moor.

We have garum, and at noon
We have cakes shaped like the moon,
With young camel's flesh in plenty and the luscious hearts of deer;
We sell plates of peacock's brains,
And the mighty narwhale canes,
Yea, and perfumed bags to shelter soldiers' beards when rains appear.

Oh sweet passer, pause and choose!
We have ornamented shoes
Made from skins of striped hyenas caught by hunters in their home.
And our prices, passer fair,
Ay, our prices, passer rare,
Are far cheaper, yea, far cheaper than the prices of foul Rome!