Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. Ever enduring thirsty summer's drought.
  2. 'Tis not enough the showers flow down my breast
  3. And beat the hail-storms on my naked hair,
  4. With beard fast frozen, rigid by the rime.
  5. 'Tis not enough that days in labour spent
  6. Sleepless I lengthen through the nights as long.
  7. Add that a godhead terrible of staff
  8. Hewed me the rustic's rude unartful hand
  9. And made me vilest of all deities,
  10. Invoked as wooden guardian of the gourds.
  11. And more, for shameless note to me was 'signed