Book II, Epigram 6 (Ker)

So much for your bidding me publish my poems! When you have read scarcely two pages, you glance at the last sheet, Severus, and pull interminable yawns! These are the poems which, when I read them again to you, you used to snatch from me and copy, and on Vitellian tablets a too! These are they, which, every one, you used to carry in your pocket at all the parties, at the theatres — these are they, or others better you don't know of. What advantage to me is a volume so thin that it is not thicker than a roller-stick, if it takes three days to read it all? Never was dilettante so indolent! A weary traveller, do you give in so soon, and, although you have to drive to Bovillae, want to change horses at the Camenae? So much for your bidding me publish my poems!