Priapeia

Priaepia

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

  1. While th' importunate fowls affrights a reed on my head-poll
  2. Planted, and hinders their flock from 'lighting in newly made gardens.
  3. Erst to be hither borne from narrow cellules ejected
  4. Corpses by fellow-slaves were coffined in biers of the vilest.
  5. This was the common yard to ensepulchre wretched plebeians,
  6. Pantolabus the buffoon and Nomentanus the rake-hell.
  7. Frontage a thousand feet, three hundred fieldwards, a land mark
  8. Here assigned, lest the ground monumental follow the heir folk.
  9. Now 'tis salubrious made: one fives in th' Esquiliae, also
  10. Walks on the sunny mound, where erstwhile showed to folk sad-eyed
  11. Fields by bones deformed a-glistening ghostly and ghastly;
  12. Yet for me never was aught, or thieves or ferals accustomed
  13. This foul spot to behaunt, a cause of such care and such trouble
  14. As are the hags who by spells and poisons upset and envenom