TO AURELIUS—HANDS OFF THE BOY!To thee I trust my loves and me,(Aurelius!) craving modesty.That (if in mind didst ever longTo win aught chaste unknowing wrong)Then guard my boy in purest way.From folk I say not: naught affrayThe crowds wont here and there to runThrough street-squares, busied every one;But thee I dread nor less thy penisFair or foul, younglings' foe I ween is!Wag it as wish thou, at its will,When out of doors its hope fulfil;Him bar I, modestly, methinks.But should ill-mind or lust's high jinksThee (Sinner!), drive to sin so dread,That durst ensnare our dearling's head,Ah! woe's thee (wretch!) and evil fate,Mullet and radish shall pierce and grate,When feet-bound, haled through yawning gate.

TO AURELIUS AND FURIUS IN DEFENCE OF HIS MUSE'S HONESTYI'll . . . you twain and . . . Pathic Aurelius! Fúrius, libertines!Who durst determine from my versiclesWhich seem o'er softy, that I'm scant of shame.For pious poet it behoves be chasteHimself; no chastity his verses need;Nay, gain they finally more salt of witWhen over softy and of scanty shame,Apt for exciting somewhat prurient,In boys, I say not, but in bearded menWho fail of movements in their hardened loins.Ye who so many thousand kisses sungHave read, deny male masculant I be?You twain I'll . . . and . . .

OF A "PREDESTINED" HUSBANDColony! fain to display thy games on length of thy town-bridge!There, too, ready to dance, though fearing the shaking of crazyLogs of the Bridgelet propt on pier-piles newly renewèd,Lest supine all sink deep-merged in the marish's hollow,So may the bridge hold good when builded after thy pleasureWhere Salisúbulus' rites with solemn function are sacred,As thou (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter.Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangwayHurlèd head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire,Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking,Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious.Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babeTwo-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father.He though, wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide,(Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet,Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest and ripest)Suffers her sport as she please nor rates her even at hair's worth,Nowise 'stirring himself, but lying log-like as alderFelled and o'er floating the fosse of safe Ligurian woodsman,Feeling withal, as though such spouse he never had own'd; So this marvel o' mine sees naught, and nothing can hear he,What he himself, an he be or not be, wholly unknowing.Now would I willingly pitch such wight head first fro' thy bridge,Better a-sudden t'arouse that numskull's stolid old senses,Or in the sluggish mud his soul supine to deposit