Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, November 23, 2003.

The Birthday of Pumpkin Pie.

The Turkey Solstice National Cranberry Awareness Day, today is Thanksgiving Day.

And in honor of the festal gatherings, I hope, are happening for all of you, today's poem is called

inviting a friend to supper by the gifted Elizabethan poet and playwright Ben Johnson.

So, from all of us at Goldberry to you and yours, here is inviting a friend to supper.

Tonight, Graves, sir, both my poor house and I do equally desire your company.

Not that we think us worthy such a guest, but that your worth will dignify our feast

with those that come, whose grace may make that seem something, which else could hope for no esteem.

It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates the entertainment perfect, not the kates.

Yet shall you have to rectify your palate an olive capers or some better salad,

ushering the mutton with a short-legged hen, if we can get her,

full of eggs, and then lemons and wine for sauce. To these a cunning is not to be despaired of

for our money, and though foul now be scarce, yet there are clerks, the sky not falling,

think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more and lie, so you will come, of partridge,

pheasant, woodcock, of which some may yet be there, and Godwit, if we can, gnat, rail,

and rough too. Howsoever my man shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some

better book to us, of which we'll speak our minds amidst our

meat, and I'll profess no verses to repeat. To this, if ought appear which I not know of,

that will the pastry not my paper show of. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be,

but that which most doth make my muse and me

...