Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. Old man Chryses had naught left him for making his moan.
  2. This did his mate dispoil of a fond affectionate mistress
  3. And of a prize not his plunderèd Aeacides,
  4. He that aye chaunted his dirge of distress to the lyre Pelethronian,
  5. Lyre of the stiff taut string, stiffer the string of himself.
  6. Ilias, noble poem, was gotten and born of such direful
  7. Ire, of that Sacred Song such was original cause.
  8. Matter of different kind was the wander of crafty Ulysses:
  9. An thou would verity know Love too was motor of this.
  10. Hence does he gather the root whence springs that aureate blossom
  11. Which whenas 'Moly' hight, 'Moly' but 'Mentula' means.
  12. Here too of Circe we read and Calypso, daughter of Atlas,