Priapeia

Priaepia

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

'Twere vile these verses impudique to read.
They still come on and not a doit they heed!
O'ermuch these matrons know and they regard
With willing glances this my vasty yard.

'Why be my parts obscene displayed without cover?' thou askest:
Ask I wherefore no God careth his sign to conceal?
Wieldeth the Lord of the World his thunderbolt ever unhidden,
Nor is trident a-sheath given to the Watery God: