Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. With beard fast frozen, rigid by the rime.
  2. 'Tis not enough that days in labour spent
  3. Sleepless I lengthen through the nights as long.
  4. Add that a godhead terrible of staff
  5. Hewed me the rustic's rude unartful hand
  6. And made me vilest of all deities,
  7. Invoked as wooden guardian of the gourds.
  8. And more, for shameless note to me was 'signed
  9. With lustful nerve a pyramid distent,
  10. Whereto a damsel (whom well nigh I'd named)
  11. Is with her fornicator wont to come
  12. And save in every mode Philaenis tells
  13. Futtered, in furious lust her way she wends.
  1. One than a goose's marrow softer far,