Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

BOOK ELEVEN

* LXXXIX
TO POLLA
WHY give me garlands that you've never fingered?
Send rather roses where your hands have lingered.
XC
TO CHRESTILLUS
SMOOTH verse you hate, but love the kind
That tumbles over crags linguistic;
Milton is weaker to your mind
Than any babbler archaistic.
You set up rugged word and phrase
For imitation-'twould not hurt you
If, like the ancients whom you praise,
You too adopted rugged virtue.
* XCI
ON THE TOMB OF A CHILD WHO DIED OF CANCER
POOR Canace lies buried in this tomb,
A child whose seventh winter scarce had come.
0 shame, 0 monstrous crime! Yet, stranger, hear;
'Tis not for life cut short we shed this tear.
Than death itself more cruel was death's guise,
The cancerous growth that spread before our eyes
And did at last so eat her lips away
That half-consumed upon the pyre they lay.
If 'twere decreed that death should come so soon,
Some other way the fell deed had been done.
But lest her plaintive cries the gods should reach
Fate dclosed the channel of her baby speech.
XCII
THE EPITOME
HE said you were a vicious man? He lied:
You're not a man, you're vice personified.
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