Book XI, Epigram 18 (Ker)

You have given me, Lupus, a suburban farm, but I have a bigger farm in my window. A farm can you call this, style this a farm, wherein a plant of rue forms a grove of Diana which the wing of a shrill cicala covers, which an ant eats up in a single day; for which a shut rose's petal would be a canopy; wherein grass is no more found than a leaf for Cosmus' perfumes or green pepper; wherein a cucumber cannot lie straight, nor a snake harbour its whole length .'' The garden gives short commons to a single caterpillar; a gnat, when it has consumed the willoAV, expires, and a mole is my ditcher and ploughman. I No mushroom can swell, no figs can split, or violets expand. My borders a mouse ravages, and is feared by the tenant as much as a Calydonian boar, and my crop, lifted by the claws of flying Procne, lies in a swallow's nest; and, though he stands shorn of his sickle and his appurtenances, there is no room by half for Priapus. My harvest, when gathered, hardly fills a snail-shell, and we store the must in a pitch-sealed nut. You have made a mistake. Lupus, but only by one letter; for when you gave me a fee I would you had given me a feed.