Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. First a wild-fig-tree trunk was I, not useful as timber,
  2. When the mechanic in doubt anent making me stool or Priapus
  3. Chose me for being a god; so a god to the thieves and the birdies
  4. Direst of dreads I became, my right the robbers restraining,
  5. Eke with a ruddy pole from parts obscenely projected,
  6. While th' importunate fowls affrights a reed on my head-poll
  7. Planted, and hinders their flock from 'lighting in newly made gardens.
  8. Erst to be hither borne from narrow cellules ejected
  9. Corpses by fellow-slaves were coffined in biers of the vilest.
  10. This was the common yard to ensepulchre wretched plebeians,
  11. Pantolabus the buffoon and Nomentanus the rake-hell.
  12. Frontage a thousand feet, three hundred fieldwards, a land mark
  13. Here assigned, lest the ground monumental follow the heir folk.
  14. Now 'tis salubrious made: one fives in th' Esquiliae, also
  15. Walks on the sunny mound, where erstwhile showed to folk sad-eyed
  16. Fields by bones deformed a-glistening ghostly and ghastly;
  17. Yet for me never was aught, or thieves or ferals accustomed
  18. This foul spot to behaunt, a cause of such care and such trouble
  19. As are the hags who by spells and poisons upset and envenom
  20. Spirits and minds of mankind; these nowise bring to perdition