The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford.

  • Juvenal
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    To kindle loose desire; girls^ that now bound Aloft, with active grace, now on the ground, With quivering limbs alight; while peals of praise go round. Lo; wives, beside their husbands plac’d, behold What could not in their ears, for shame, be told; {Expedients of the rich, the blood to lire, And wake the dying embers of desire;) “ Behold?” O, heavens! they view with keener gust These strong provocatives of jaded lust. Feel at each gesture, sound, their passions rise, And draw in pleasure both at ears and eyes I Such vicious fancies are too great for me. Let him the wanton dance unblushing see, And hear th’ immodest terms which, in the stews, The veriest strumpet scarce would deign to use. Whose drunken spawlings roll, tumultuous, o’er The proud expansion of a marble floor; For there the world a large allowance make. And spare the folly for the fortune’s sake. Gaming, adultery, with a small estate. Are damning crimes; but venial with a great; choice of iheir castanets; some have been showed me that cost five and twenty or thirty dollars a pair; these were made of the beautifully variegated woods of South America. Ver. 2t)2. Gaming, aduUtry, ^c.] Thus Beaumont: “ In lords a wildness is a noble trick. And cherish’d in them, and all men must love it.” Waid in the Mill.