Small house and quiet roof tree, shadowing elm,
Grapes on the vine and cherries ripening.
Red apples in the orchard, Pallas’ tree
Breaking with olives, and well-watered earth,
And fields of kale and heavy creeping mallows
And poppies that will surely bring me sleep.
And if I go a-snaring for birds
Or timid deer, or angling the shy trout,
‘Tis all the guile that my poor fields will know.
Go now, yea, go, and sell your life, swift life,
For golden feasts. If the end waits me too,
I pray it find me here, and here shall ask
The reckoning from me of the vanished hours.

–Petronius Arbiter