Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. Guest! of the water shalt drink serving for different use.
  1. Long as thy wanton hand to pluck refrain
  2. Chaster than Vesta's self thou may'st remain
  3. Else thee my belly's arm shall loosen so
  4. Out of thy proper anus thou shalt flow.
  1. A damsel drier than the raisin'd grape,
  2. Warmer than boxwood or than virgin wax,
  3. Who pismires clustering on her every limb
  4. Maketh a bulky-corpulent folk appear;
  5. One whose unopened bowels through her skin
  6. The Tuscan wizard can at will prospect;
  7. One who like rotten pounce so lacking juice
  8. None ever saw her with a slavering lip;
  9. One whom for blood her arteries within
  10. To have sand or sawdust differing leeches deem--
  11. Such one to visit me anights is wont
  12. Bringing with ghostly leanness ghastly hue;
  13. Whist I (like island iron-forger) seem
  14. To rub and rasp me on a lanthorn's horn
  1. Wont the Priapi of old were to have both Naiads and Dryads