Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. One who like rotten pounce so lacking juice
  2. None ever saw her with a slavering lip;
  3. One whom for blood her arteries within
  4. To have sand or sawdust differing leeches deem--
  5. Such one to visit me anights is wont
  6. Bringing with ghostly leanness ghastly hue;
  7. Whist I (like island iron-forger) seem
  8. To rub and rasp me on a lanthorn's horn
  1. Wont the Priapi of old were to have both Naiads and Dryads
  2. And the stiff vein of the God all had what causes to droop;
  3. Now there's naught of the kind; now so fulfilled my desire is
  4. Fain am I left to believe every Nymph to be dead.
  5. Vile thing 'twere to be done, but lest I burst me with straining
  6. Sickle unhanding I mistress must make of my hand.
  1. At holy offering to the Lustful God
  2. Hired was a harlot for a slender price
  3. To meet the common wants of commonweal;
  4. And for as many men one night outworked
  5. So many willow yards she'll give to thee.
  1. Thief, for first thieving shalt be swived, but an