Eggs for your meal and dessert apples, friend,
As gifts from my suburban home I send.

At three hundred tables your fare might be spread,
But with you we find three hundred waiters instead.
They snatch off the plates and make each course fly fast.
Enough! I don't care for a walking repast.

Whilst you attempt your present to commend
In verses fit for Homer's approbation,
You suffer agonies, ambitious friend,
And I starvation;
'Tis Martial suffers while your Muse is mute;
The rich can wait for verse — on them bestow it:
Hard cash, tho' unaccompanied, would suit

The best you can do is to grant my demand,
Your second-best course to refuse it off-hand;
I welcome assent and denial excuse —
But, Cinna, you neither consent nor refuse.

Who can dispute with you the meed
For tuneful verse or noble deed?
Not I, who readily concede
The palm;
'Tis ease and quiet I pursue —
" Then why send feeble verses?" True,
Yet coals to Newcastle can do

You boast " The world's my country!" Be it so;
It takes all sorts to make a world you know!

Here lies the sage, long in the palace known,
Who bore the Emperor's favour and his frown
Undaunted. By their children's love at rest
Husband and wife are of one grave possessed.
She died in youth, robbed of her life's spring bloom;
The father to his ninetieth year did come.
Yet all who see his children's tears believe
That they for one untimely taken grieve.

The Cyclops of old, could he only behold
Polyphemus, would start with surprise,
And Scylla for shame's sake would turn from her namesake
So ghastly their faces and size.
Ah, would it were fated the pair should be mated
Their terror they hardly could smother,
Just think of the sight when each shuddered with fright
And fainted at view of the other!

You know the dread signal of death I suppose?
But one whimsical quaestor has lately ordained
A new one, and said if he once blew his nose
It was sentence of death on the culprit arraigned.
Till winter drew on was the custom maintained,
Then the judge caught catarrh from December's chill breath
And his colleagues rushed up and his hands they restrained
Or all the accused had been sentenced to death.

What time my rugged cot endured the bane
Of winter's drenching floods, your kindly care
Sent wherewithal the havoc to repair
And so my roof defies the sudden rain.
Think how rude Boreas roars; the boon is vain
That clothes the farm but leaves the farmer bare.