...There was a king reigned in the East:        
There, when kings will sit to feast,              
They get their fill before they think        
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.        
He gathered all the springs to birth        
From the many-venomed earth;        
First a little, thence to more,              
He sampled all her killing store;        
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,        
Sate the king when healths went round.        
They put arsenic in his meat        
And stared aghast to watch him eat;              
They poured strychnine in his cup        
And shook to see him drink it up:        
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:        
Them it was their poison hurt.        
—I tell the tale that I heard told.              
Mithridates, he died old.        

             --A. E. Housman, 1896