Short Poems

C ARUS is dead; the infamous deceiver;
To crown his many crimes he died of fever!
That fever too was cruel and malignant,
It should have been a quartan, more benignant;
For had it brought the germs of that to fill him,
He might have lived to let the doctor kill him.

He sits up late, you think it odd demeanour?
Think of his wife! Good heavens, have you seen her?

An ancient boatman bought a plot of ground
Beside the stream where he had plied his calling,
But Tiber's winter flood rose quickly round
The field, and threatened ruin most appalling;
And so with stones he filled his useless boat
Which, now a dam, averted inundation.
Strange miracle! a craft that would not float
Has proved a troubled mariner's salvation!

Young Laurus with unerring aim
Strove eagerly to capture fame.
So much he loved the butts that he,
Old and retired, a butt must be!

When yesterday you sold a slave and spent
On one luxurious feast the price he brought,
How foul that feast; the mullet that you bought,
Its very crown and pride, to all intent
Was not a fish, and thus we brand your greed—
Ah, loathly wretch, on human life you feed.

The Syracusans have a sign
That can a double purpose play;
And now I call Callistion mine
I wish that we were free as they.
For though I sing her curving lips
Often I really mean her hips.

Who pray could be so harsh, so proud of look
As to declare that you should be a cook?
Could any man endure your face to shame
With soot, or mar your hair with greasy flame?
Who in your place will hold the crystal glass,
Or with more grace the old Falerman pass?
If fates like this you angel boys attend.
Ganymede too will in the kitchen end.

If old Galba, once so happy with Augustus as his lord,
Were to us from his Elysium for a day to be restored,
And against Capitolinus now a jesting-match should try,
‘Boorish Galba, cease your fooling’—all the audience would cry.

Ah happy they, whom Fortune grants to see
Our chief ablaze with northern pageantry.
When shall our maidens at their windows stand
And fill the Campus with their happy band?
When shall all Rome on the Flaminian Way
See the dust rise that ends the dear delay?
While knights and painted Moors and people cry—
‘He comes, he comes’—as Caesar passes by.

Had Socrates a Roman been,
As Julius Rufus here he's seen.