(Though divine Plato thus of pleasures thought,
They us, with hooks and baits, like fishes caught.)
When Questor, to the gods in public halls
I was the first who set up festivals. 
Not with high tastes our appetites did force,
But fill’d with conversation and discourse;
Which feasts, Convivial Meetings we did name: 
Not like the ancient Greeks, who to their shame, 480
Call’d it a Compotation, not a feast;
Declaring the worst part of it the best. 
Those entertainments I did then frequent
Sometimes with youthful heat and merriment: 
But now I thank my age, which gives me ease
From those excesses; yet myself I please
With cheerful talk to entertain my guests
(Discourses are to age continual feasts),
The love of meat and wine they recompense,
And cheer the mind, as much as those the sense. 490
I’m not more pleased with gravity among
The aged, than to be youthful with the young;
Nor ’gainst all pleasures proclaim open war,
To which, in age, some nat’ral motions are. 
And still at my Sabinum I delight
To treat my neighbours till the depth of night. 
But we the sense of gust and pleasure want,
Which youth at full possesses; this I grant;
But age seeks not the things which youth requires,
And no man needs that which he not desires. 500
When Sophocles was asked if he denied
Himself the use of pleasures, he replied,
’I humbly thank th’immortal gods, who me
From that fierce tyrant’s insolence set free.’ 
But they whom pressing appetites constrain,
Grieve when they cannot their desires obtain. 
Young men the use of pleasure understand,
As of an object new, and near at hand: 
Though this stands more remote from age’s sight, 509
Yet they behold it not without delight: 
As ancient soldiers, from their duties eased,
With sense of honour and rewards are pleased;
So from ambitious hopes and lusts released,
Delighted with itself our age doth rest. 
No part of life’s more happy, when with bread
Of ancient knowledge and new learning fed;
All youthful pleasures by degrees must cease,
But those of age even with our years increase. 
We love not loaded boards and goblets crown’d,
But free from surfeits our repose is sound. 520
When old Fabricius to the Samnites went
Ambassador, from Rome to Pyrrhus sent,
He heard a grave philosopher maintain,
That all the actions of our life were vain
Which with our sense of pleasure not conspired;
Fabricius the philosopher desired,
That he to Pyrrhus would that maxim teach,
And to the Samnites the same doctrine preach;
Then of their conquest he should doubt no more,
Whom their own pleasures overcame before. 530
Now into rustic matters I must fall,
Which pleasure seems to me the chief of all.