No wreathed garland decks the festive door,
No savoury odour creeps into the nostrils
Since ’tis a birth-feast? Custom, sooth, requires
Slices of rich cheese from the Chersonese,
Toasted and hissing; cabbage too in oil,
Fried brown and crisp, with smothered breast of lamb.
Chaffinches, turtle-doves, and good fat thrushes
Should now be feathered; rows of merry guests
Pick clean the bones of cuttle-fish together,
Gnaw the delicious feet of polypi,