Gay as the flowers that Hybla shows in spring,
What time the bees are plundering on the wing,
So shine your presses with their mantles bright,
So gleams your chest with evening wrappers white,
Spoils of her flocks Apulia sent to you,
Enough to clothe a Roman tribe anew.
And yet — O shame — you look with careless eye
Upon your friend who passes shivering by
In threadbare coat, and do not think to give
A rag or two to keep him just alive.
You would not feel the loss, you need not fear:
The moths alone would be the sufferers here.

When your duty you never could do to your wife,
Why offer yourself to the surgeon's sharp knife?

If Hunks should see me buy a coat,
A slave, or something worth a groat,
He shudders at my spendthrift whim,
And lest I beg a loan of him —
Though I have known him many a year —
He whispers so that I may hear: —
" Four thousand Sesterces are due
To Phoebus, and Secundus too
Is pressing for his debt, 'tis seven;
Philetus duns me for eleven:
I've not a farthing left to spend."
How clever, my ingenious friend!
Were I to ask, refusing me
Would wound your generosity;
It needs must be a harder task
Refusing what I do not ask.

The proverb goes — " Let friends together profit."
And this is your interpretation of it.
You sport a toga of Tarentine wool.
Such tufts as from the Parman flocks they pull:
Mine is so old you'd think a bull had torn it,
Or that some scarecrow in the ring had worn it.
Your Tyrian mantle's one of Cadmus own:
My poor red cloak would scarce fetch half-a-crown.
Your marble rounds on Indian ivory rest:
My table's wood and is on drain-pipes pressed.
For you huge mullets lie in golden dish:
I from red earthen plates eat red crawfish.

The bath-water's fouled when your buttocks you swill.
Just put in your head; 'twill be dirtier still.

" LAUGH , maiden, laugh, if thou be wise," —
Aye, that methinks was Ovid's rede;
And yet not all doth he advise;
But if he spake to all indeed
The poet's saw thou can'st not plead
Who long are past thy maidenhood,
And hast, for teeth to serve thy need;
Three stumps the hue of pitch or wood.

So if thou trust thy glass and me,
Put thoughts of laughter out of mind;
The merry mood is not for thee,
Nor for the fops a blustering wind.
These shun the jostling of their kind,
The beldame with her powdered grace

A GUE they say! I know what his complaint is,
A case of greed suppressed and thirst unsated:
Exhibit thrushes fat and other dainties;
Red mullets too and pike are indicated;
With fine old port his thirst should be abated,
And rare liqueurs stored in their slender bottles —
The faculty have all miscalculated
Hydropathy won't cure such fevered throttles.

You took a woman off the street,
You gave her dresses rich and rare,
And yet the penitential sheet
She might with greater fitness wear.

You ask me how my farm can pay,
Since little it will bear;
It pays me thus. — 'Tis far away
And you are never there.

Scarce was the dinner served, ere you
Had swept away our every dish;
Sow's udder, woodcock meant for two,
Pig's ear, the choicest kinds of fish,
The lamprey and the chicken's thigh,
The pigeon stewed in sauces rare —
And we, the hungry company,
Had nothing left to do but stare!
That bulging cloth, a dripping pack,
Your slave bore off. Pretend or feel
Some shame, and put our dinner back;
'Twas not for your to-morrow's meal.