He is older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun's hot wheel on these. He wakes the gale… - Robert Graves

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either

I have watched your career with fascination, Sejanus. It's been a revelation it's been to me! I've never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition and without scruple, can destroy a country full of clever men. I've seen how fragile is the structure of a civilization before the onslaught of a gust of really bad breath! But I suppose you are not really the destroyer. No, we must look elsewhere for that. You are merely the putrefaction that spreads after death - the outward and visible signs of its presence! You're a lesson in history to me, Sejanus, proving that, above all, Mankind needs its sense of smell.

"The Blue Fly"

Five summer days, five summer nights,
The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly
Hung without motion on the cling peach
Humming occasionally ‘O my love, my fair one!’
As in the canticles.

Magnified one thousand times, the insect
Looks farcically human; laugh if you will!
Bald head, stage fairy wings, blear eyes,
A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles,
Long spindly thighs.

The crime was detected on the sixth day.
What then could be said or done? By anyone?
It would have been vindictive, mean, and what-not,
To swat that fly for being a blue-fly,
For debauch of a peach.

Is it fair either, to bring a microscope
To bear on the case, even in search of truth?
Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause
To glut the carriers of her epidemics -
Nor did the peach complain.