Venom 1 ; Mithridates (from A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad}

The volume used was Betsy’s ancient first edition.”Lad” has provided more titles than any other English work of art than The King Jame s version or Shakespeare, including many in Science Fiction. Reid? How about “For a breath I tarry”? I always thought his and Poul Anderson’s stoic world view had much in common

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
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; 70
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. 75
Mithridates, he died old.