Pay me my price, potters! and I will sing. <br />Attend, O Pallas! and with lifted arm <br />Protect their oven; let the cups and all <br />The sacred vessels black well, and, baked <br />With good success, yield them both fair renown <br />And profit, whether in the market sold <br />Or streets, and let no strife ensue between us. <br />But, oh ye potters! if with shameless front <br />Ye falsify your promise, then I leave <br />No mischief uninvoked to avenge the wrong. <br />Come, Syntrips, Smaragus, Sabactes, come, <br />And Asbetus, nor let your direst dread, <br />Omodamus, delay! Fire seize your house, <br />May neither house nor vestibule escape, <br />May ye lament to see confusion mar <br />And mingle the whole labor of your hands, <br />And may a sound fill all your oven, such <br />As of a horse grinding his provender, <br />While all your pots and flagons bounce within. <br />Come hither, also, daughter of the sun, <br />Circe the sorceress, and with thy drugs <br />Poison themselves, and all that they have made <br />Of centaurs, as well those who died beneath <br />The club of Hercules, as who escaped, <br />And stamp their crockery to dust; down fall <br />Their chimney; let them see it with their eyes <br />And howl to see the ruin of their art, <br />While I rejoice; and if a potter stoop <br />To peep into his furnace, may the fire <br />Flash in his face and scorch it, that all men <br />Observe, thenceforth, equity and good faith.<br /><br />William Cowper<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-epigram-from-homer/
