Priapeia

Priaepia

by divers poets in English verse and prose. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and Leonard C. Smithers

  1. 'Tis not enough, my friends, I set my seat
  2. Where earth gapes chinky under Canicule,
  3. Ever enduring thirsty summer's drought.
  4. 'Tis not enough the showers flow down my breast
  5. And beat the hail-storms on my naked hair,
  6. With beard fast frozen, rigid by the rime.
  7. 'Tis not enough that days in labour spent
  8. Sleepless I lengthen through the nights as long.
  9. Add that a godhead terrible of staff
  10. Hewed me the rustic's rude unartful hand
  11. And made me vilest of all deities,
  12. Invoked as wooden guardian of the gourds.
  13. And more, for shameless note to me was 'signed
  14. With lustful nerve a pyramid distent,
  15. Whereto a damsel (whom well nigh I'd named)
  16. Is with her fornicator wont to come
  17. And save in every mode Philaenis tells
  18. Futtered, in furious lust her way she wends.