When maiden dark I light upon
I eat the saving blackberry."[71]

These amateur poets do not rely entirely upon their own Muse, but borrow
from Ovid, Propertius, or Virgil, when they recall sentiments in those
writers which express their feelings. Sometimes it is a tag, or a line, or
a couplet which is taken, but the borrowings are woven into the context
with some skill. The poet above who is under compulsion from his blonde
sweetheart, has taken the second half of his production verbatim from
Ovid, and for the first half of it has modified a line of Propertius.
Other writers have set down their sentiments in verse on more prosaic
subjects. A traveller on his way to the capital has scribbled these lines
on the wall, perhaps of a wine-shop where he stopped for refreshment:[72]

"Hither have we come in safety.
Now I hasten on my way,
That once more it may be mine
To behold our Lares, Rome."

At one point in a Pompeian street, the eye of a straggler would catch this
notice in doggerel verse:[73]

"Here's no place for loafers.
Lounger, move along!"

On the wall of a wine-shop a barmaid has thus advertised her wares:[74]

"Here for a cent is a drink,
Two cents brings something still better.
Four cents in all, if you pay,