Classic Poem

Cut from the bastard-fig of yore,
A lumpish useless form I bore,
When the pos'd joiner was in doubt,
What in the end I shou'd turn out,
A god, or chipping-block — at last
My lot was for Priapus cast.
Hence as a pow'r divine, I stand
To scare the thieves and birds — my hand
The former checks, but for the crows
A reed is fix'd above my nose,
Which still forbids them to parade
In these fine gardens, newly made.
Here sometime since the fellow-slave,
Brought out dead corpses to the grave,
From all their narrow cells thrown out,
And in vile coffins borne about.
This was the common burying place,
For wretches of Plebeian race,
Where fool Pantolabus they bore,
And Nomentanus rakes no more.
A pillar here inscrib'd, assign'd
A thousand feet in front — behind
Three hundred tow'rds the fields adjoin'd;
A fixt memorial, to assert
It could not to the heir revert.
But now so good th'Esquilian air,
That one may like a lodging there,
And on a sunny terras stalk,
Where grieved spectators us'd to walk,
And view with lamentable groans,
The place deform'd with human bones.
Tho' both the thieves and ev'ry brute,
That us'd to haunt this place to boot,
Gave me not half the plague and care,
As these old hags that here repair,
And with their magic drugs and charms
Turn people's brains — by no alarms
These can I quell or drive away,
When the vague beauteous moon-beams play.
But that both bones they will collect,
And simples of a curs'd effect.
I saw Canidia in black gown
Succinct, and walking up and down
With naked feet, dishevell'd hair,
And howling to the midnight air;
With Sagana that elder scold —
They both were ghastly to behold.
Then they began with nails to scratch
The earth, and with their teeth dispatch
A black ewe-lamb alive and crude,
His blood into a ditch they spew'd,
That so they might the ghosts compel,
To give them answers out of hell.
A woollen effigy they bring,
And one of wax — the former thing
Was largest, and in act express,
As if 'twas punishing the less.
The waxen was in suppliant mood,
As bound to perish on the rood.
This hag did Hecate invoke,
That fell Tisiphone bespoke;
While serpents and infernal curs,
And moon behind the sepulchres
You might have seen to blush for shame,
Lest she, forsooth, should bear the blame.
Now if one lie defile my tongue,
May all the crows my form bedung!
Why should I mention every fact,
And tell each circumstance exact?
How Sagana to a spectre speaks,
The one by grumbling, one by shrieks,
And how in earth, with wolf's grim beard,
They teeth of spotted snake interr'd.
How from the image made of wax,
A rousing fire awakes and cracks.
How at these furies I was shock'd,
But not intirely foil'd and mock'd;
For as a bladder sounds, when broke,
I from my fig-posteriors spoke.
They scar'd, into the city hied,
With laughter then you might have died.
Canidia's artificial bones
For teeth, came tumbling on the stones:
And what the jest shou'd not abate,
Old Sagana soon lost her tete,
With magic herbs upon the ground,
And bracelet from her arm unbound.