Short Poems

If you have leisure, glance at this quatrain;
You busy men shirk labour when you can,
So skip the rest and I shall not complain;
You skip this too? That is the wiser plan.

B AIAE is happy Venus' golden shore,
Nature's alluring gift, her joy and pride,
And, though a thousand verses I should pour.
Yet must I leave her beauty half-belied.
Is Julius there? Nay, Fortune should deride
My greed if I should pray to meet him there;
And yet might heaven that double boon provide
Julius and Baiae — what a joy it were!

A AND his wife long years have lived apart,
And now that wife has given him a son.
Well, B can match that miracle in art;
He fathers verse, but has begotten none.

The feast you gave me cost but half a crown,
Yet I must call next day in proper trim
And walk before your chair through half the town
To call on ten old hags of aspect grim.
My toga's worn and shabby I admit,
But half a crown won't buy the like of it.

All round the vintage failed; upon the trade
Ruin marched quick — the saving rain yet quicker:
Logwood and Company I hear have made
A hundred hogsheads of their usual liquor.

To me 'tis filthy strychnine you dispense,
Then ask for wine! Why, damn your impudence!
In Homer, Glaucus for a crazy whim
Exchanges gold for bronze — am I like him?
Give a sweet draught to you and take instead
That bitter stuff? The fool is off his head.
Well take it then — but ere you drink it up
Pour a stiff dose of bromide in the cup!

Pour out six measures from the older cask;
Why dally so? Nay, pour the deathless wine.
" What holy name has letters six, you ask,
Save Caesar"? Aye my thought you can divine;
So in my wreath ten lovely roses twine
For him the builder of the Flavian fane
And give me kisses ten to be a sign
That as a god Sarmaticus doth reign.

You used to send me gifts, now having won
My favour, as you think, you send me none;
'Tis best to feed a captive now and then,
The boar ill-fed is like to force his den.

Seven goblets of Opimian, a bumper full was each,
I quaffed, and that will make a man a trifle thick of speech.
You chose this hour to come and say, " My Nasta I have freed,
He was my father's servant, pray just sign and seal the deed."
My seal is busy: if you call to-morrow 'twill be right,
The seal upon a cork is all that it can mark to-night.

Fair were the pageants given in days of yore,
To Caesar owe we deeper obligations;
Our eyes confess they owe him much, far more
Our grateful ears — he banned the recitations!