Poetry: Thanksgiving

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• ROBERT PINSKY:

  Eating together with friends and relatives can be an ordeal, or a height of civilized pleasure. The powerful combination of abundance and company drives Ben Jonson's poem of about four hundred years ago, "Inviting a Friend to Supper." He begins:

  Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I Doe equally desire your company: Not that we think us worthy such a guest, But that your worth will dignify our feast,

  Jonson lovingly elaborates the menu:

  Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, An olive, capers, or some better salad Ushering the mutton; with a short-leg 'd hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then, Lemons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney Is not to be despaired of, for our money; And, though fowl, now, be scarce, yet there are clarkes, The sky not falling, think we may have larks.

  The menu goes on, as fantasy:

  I'll tell you more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit, if we can: Knat, rail, and ruffe too.

  Jonson also inludes an interesting promise in his invitation:

  And I'll profess no verses to repeat . . .

  Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will bee; But that, which most doth take my Muse, and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary-wine, Which is the Mermaid's, now, but shall be mine: Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted. . . .

  Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Polly', or Parrot by; Nor shall our cups make any guilty men: But, at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met. No simple word, That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning: or affright The liberty, that we'll enjoy tonight.

  I wish you a festive Thanksgiving.