A Recipe for Salad

To make this condiment your poet begs The pounded yellow of two hard boiled eggs; Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve, Smoothness and softness to the salad give; Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, And, half suspected, animate the whole; Of mordant mustard add a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites so soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault To add a double quantity of salt; Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca crown, And twice with vinegar, procured from town; And lastly, o’er the flavored compound toss A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce. O green and glorious! O herbaceous treat! ’T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he ’d turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl; Serenely full, the epicure would say, “Fate cannot harm me,—I have dined to-day.”