Priapeia

Priaepia

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

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