Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Remind you of anyone?

Atticus, you speak charmingly,
plead cases charmingly,
write charming stories and verses.
You're a charming grammarian
and astrologer, and you sing
and dance charmingly, Atticus, charmingly.
You play the harp charmingly
and charmingly toss the ball.
Since you do nothing really well,
but everything charmingly,
what shall I call you, Atticus?
A magnificent busybody.

-Martial


from Barriss Mills' Epigrams from Martial ; A Verse Translation, copyright 1969 Purdue Research Foundation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do lots of these things, just not charmingly. I tend to prefer the term "dilettante" to "busybody".