At The "Cock" Tavern.

Champagne doth not a luncheon make,
    Nor caviare a meal;
Men gluttonous and rich may take
    These till they make them ill.
If I've potatoes to my chop,
    And after that have cheese,
Angels in Pond & Spiers's shop
    Serve no such luxuries.

Horace Smith

Horace Smith was an English poet and novelist, known for his collaboration with his brother James Smith in writing parodies. The brothers published 'Rejected Addresses' in 1812, which humorously imitated contemporary poets and became highly popular. Horace was also a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote various works, including novels that reflect his interest in social issues and history. His writing often combined wit with a keen social conscience.

Horace Smith

Lullaby.

Horace Smith, Simple Poetry

Young England.

Horace Smith, Simple Poetry

Prologue To A Charade. - "Damn-Ages."

Horace Smith, Simple Poetry

Love And Liberty.

Horace Smith, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Twopenny Post-Bag, Intercepted Letters, Etc. Letter VIII.

FROM COLONEL THOMAS TO ---- SKEFFINGTON, ESQ.


Come to our Fête and bring with thee
Thy newest, best embroidery.
Come to our Fête and show again
That pea-green coat, thou pink of men,
Which charmed all eyes that last surveyed it;
When Brummel's self inquired "who made it?"--
When Cits came wondering from the East
And thought thee Poet Pye at least!

    Oh! come, (if haply 'tis thy week
For looking pale,) with paly cheek;
Tho' more we love thy roseate days,
When the rich rouge-pot pours its blaze
Full o'er thy face and amply spread,
Tips even thy whisker-tops with red--
Like the last tints of dying Day
That o'er some darkling grove delay.

    Bring thy best lace, thou gay Philander,
(That lace, like Harry Alexander,
...

Thomas Moore

Beer.

In those old days which poets say were golden -
(Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:
And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden
To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves,
Who talk to me "in language quaint and olden"
Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves,
Pans with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards,
And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:)

In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette
(Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born.
They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet,
No fashions varying as the hues of morn.
Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate,
Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn)
And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked,
And were no doubt extremely incorrect.

Yet do I think their t...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Verses Made For Fruit-Women

APPLES

Come buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples, and pears.
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husband a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthing will gain them,
And I must maintain them.



ASPARAGUS

    Ripe 'sparagrass
    Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
    O, 'tis pretty picking
    With a tender chicken!



ONIONS


        Come, follow me by the smell,
        Here are delicate onions to sell;
        I promise to use you well.
        They make the blood warmer,
        You'll feed like a farmer;
For this is every cook's opinion,
No savoury dish without an on...

Jonathan Swift

Invitation To Dinner. Addressed To Lord Lansdowne.

September, 1818.


Some think we bards have nothing real;
    That poets live among the stars so,
Their very dinners are ideal,--
    (And, heaven knows, too oft they are so,)--
For instance, that we have, instead
    Of vulgar chops and stews and hashes,
First course--a Phoenix, at the head.
    Done in its own celestial ashes;
At foot, a cygnet which kept singing
All the time its neck was wringing.
Side dishes, thus--Minerva's owl,
Or any such like learned fowl:
Doves, such as heaven's poulterer gets,
When Cupid shoots his mother's pets.
Larks stewed in Morning's roseate breath,
    Or roasted by a sunbeam's splendor;
And nightingales, berhymed to death--
    Like young pigs whipt to make them tender.

Such fare may suit ...

Thomas Moore

Nux Postcoenatica

I was sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug,
With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug;
The true bug had been organized with only two antennae,
But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many.

And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art,
How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part,
When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two,
And a man of forty entered, exclaiming, "How d' ye do?"

He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone;
He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone;
(It's odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade,
As if when life had reached its noon it wanted them for shade!)

I lost my focus, - dropped my book, - the bug, who was a flea,
At on...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Public Dinner.

"Sit down and fall to, said the Barmecide."
Arabian Nights.


At seven you just nick it,
Give card - get wine ticket;
Walk round through the Babel,
From table to table,
To find - a hard matter -
Your name in a platter;
Your wish was to sit by
Your friend Mr. Whitby,
But stewards' assistance
Has placed you at distance,
And, thanks to arrangers,
You sit amongst strangers,
But too late for mending;
Twelve sticks come attending
A stick of a Chairman,
A little dark spare man,
With bald, shining nob,
'Mid committee swell-mob;
In short, a short figure, -
You thought the Duke bigger.
Then silence is wanted,
Non Nobis is chanted;
Then Chairman reads letter,
The Duke's a regretter,
A promise to br...

Thomas Hood