POVERTY:--You'll not have a bed to lie down on--no goods of the sort will be seen! Not a carpet to tread on--for who, pray, will weave one, when well stock'd his coffers have been? Farewell to your essences, perfumes, pastilles! When you lead to the altar your bride Farewell to your roseate veil's drooping folds, the bright hues of its glittering pride! Yet forsooth "to be rich"--say what is it, without all these gew-gaws to swell the detail? Now with me, every item that wish can suggest springs abundant and never can fail; For who, but myself, urges on to his toil, like a mistress, and drives the mechanic? If he flags, I but show him my face at the door, and he hies to his work in a panic! CHREMYLUS:--Pshaw! What good can _you_ bring but sores, blisters and blains, on the wretch as he shivering goes From the baths' genial clime driv'n forth to the cold, at the certain expense of his toes? What, but poor little urchins, whose stomachs are craving, and little old beldames in shoals; And lice by the thousand, mosquitoes and flies? (I can't count you the cloud as it rolls!) Which keep humming and buzzing about one, a language denying the respite of sleep, In a strain thus consoling--"Poor starveling, awake, tho to hunger!"--yet up you must leap! Add to this, that you treat us with rags to our backs and a bundle of straw for a bed (Woe betide the poor wretch on whose carcass the bugs of that ravenous pallet have fed!) For a carpet, a rotten old mat--for a pillow, a great stone picked out of the street-- And for porridge, or bread, a mere leaf of radish, or stem of a mallow, to eat. The head that remains of some wreck of a pitcher, by way of a seat you provide; For the trough we make use of in kneading, we're driven to shift with a wine barrel's side,-- And this, too, all broken and split:--in a word, your magnificent gifts to conclude, (_Ironically_) To mankind you indeed are a blessed dispenser of mighty and manifold good!... On my word, dame, your fav'rites are happily off, after striving and toiling to save, If at last they are able to levy enough to procure them a cheque to the grave! The Lawyer and the Farmer (Egyptian; B.C. 1400, or earlier. A letter from a father to his son, exhorting him to stick to the study of his profession) It is told to me that thou hast cast aside learning, and givest thyself to dancing; thou turnest thy face to the work in the fields, and castest the divine words behind thee.