Give Crowns And Pounds And Guineas But

That Is The Land Of Lost Content, I See It Shining Plain, The Happy Highways Where I Went And Cannot Come Again.

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.

This Is For All Ill-treated Fellows Unborn And Unbegot, For Them To Read When They're In Trouble And I Am Not.

Mithridates, He Died Old. Housman's Passage Is Based On The Belief Of The Ancients That Mithridates The Great [c. 135-63 B.c.] Had So Saturated His Body With Poisons That None Could Injure Him. When Captured By The Romans He Tried In Vain To Poison Himself, Then Ordered A Gallic Mercenary To Kill Him.

Now, Of My Threescore Years And Ten, Twenty Will Not Come Again.