- by Steven Vincent Benét
They bred such horses in Virginia then--
Horses that were remembered after death,
And buried not so far from Christian ground
That if their sleeping riders should awake
They could not witch them from the earth again
And ride a printless course along the grass
With the old manage and light ease of hand...
- Mithridates
from "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff"
by A.E. Housman
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more.
He sampled all her killing store:
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
