Priapeia
Priaepia
by divers poets in English verse and prose. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and Leonard C. Smithers
- Where earth gapes chinky under Canicule,
- Ever enduring thirsty summer's drought.
- 'Tis not enough the showers flow down my breast
- And beat the hail-storms on my naked hair,
- With beard fast frozen, rigid by the rime.
- 'Tis not enough that days in labour spent
- Sleepless I lengthen through the nights as long.
- Add that a godhead terrible of staff
- Hewed me the rustic's rude unartful hand
- And made me vilest of all deities,
- Invoked as wooden guardian of the gourds.
- And more, for shameless note to me was 'signed
- With lustful nerve a pyramid distent,
- Whereto a damsel (whom well nigh I'd named)
- Is with her fornicator wont to come
- And save in every mode Philaenis tells
- Futtered, in furious lust her way she wends.
- One than a goose's marrow softer far,
- Comes hither stealing for its penalty's sake:
- Steal he as please him: I will see him not.