Priapeia
Priaepia
by divers poets in English verse and prose. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and Leonard C. Smithers
- Ah hapless I, that should be only wood
- What makes me ever formidable seem!
- Yet will I charge my garden's lustful lord
- For me deign robber-folk to irrumate.
- A chough, a caries, an eld-worn grave,
- By lapse of crowding centuries rotten grown,
- Who as a wetnurse haply may have fed
- Tithonus, Priam, Nestor, and perchance
- When they were little lads was agèd crone,
- Sues me for swiver she may never lack!
- How if she pray me to be girl again?
- Yet, if she's moneyed, she's again a girl.
- Whatever thief shall trick my faith may he
- Wither, far banisht from th' effeminate bum!
- Whatever damsel plucks with wanton hand
- This fruitage, never find she one to strum!
- Know, lest due warning be denied by thee,
- An thief thou come male whore shalt surely flee.