The butler has gone out: the stormy sea
Preserves its fishes safe from you and me:
No matter: salt ad libitum, with bread
Will soothe the Cerberus of our maws instead.
What gives you appetite? 'tis not the meat
Contains the relish: 'tis in you that eat.
Get condiments by work: for when the skin
Is pale and bloated from disease within,
Not golden plover, oyster, nor sardine,
Can make the edge of dulled enjoyment keen.
Yet there's one prejudice I sorely doubt
If force of reason ever will root out:
Oft as a peacock's set before you, still
Prefer it to a fowl you must and will,
Because (as if that mattered when we dine!)
The bird is costly, and its tail's so fine.
What? do you eat the feathers? when'tis drest
And sent to table, does it still look best?
While, as to flesh, the two are on a par:
Yes, you're the dupe of mere outside, you are.
You see that pike: what is it tells you straight
Where those wide jaws first opened for the bait,
In sea or river? 'twixt the bridges twain,
Or at the mouth where Tiber joins the main?
A three-pound mullet you must needs admire,
And yet you know 'tis never served entire.
The size attracts you: well then, why dislike
The selfsame quality when found in pike?
Why, but to fly in Nature's face for spite.
Because she made these heavy those weigh light?
e
