Oh, herbaceous treat!
’Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl;
Serenely full the epicure would say,
“Fate cannot harm me—I have dined to-day.”
This again is an adaptation of Dryden’s “Imitation of Horace” (Book III, Ode 29):
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,