Or in the sluggish mud his soul supine to deposit
Even as she-mule casts iron shoe where quagmire is stiffest.
O Colonia, that longest to disport thyself on a long bridge and art prepared for the dance, but that fearest the trembling legs of the bridgelet builded on re-used shavings, lest supine it may lie stretched in
the hollow swamp; may a good bridge take its place designed to thy fancy, on which e'en the Salian dances may be sustained: for the which grant to me, Colonia, greatest of gifts glee-exciting. Such an one, townsman of mine, I want from thy bridge to be pitched in the sludge head over heels, right where the lake of all its stinking slime is dankest and most superfluent—a deep-sunk abyss. The man is a gaping gaby! lacking the sense of a two-years-old baby dozing on its father's cradling arm. Although to him is wedded a girl flushed with springtide's bloom (and a girl more dainty than a tender kid, meet to be watched with keener diligence than the lush-black grape-bunch), he leaves her to sport at her list, cares not a single hair, nor bestirs himself with marital office, but lies as an alder felled by Ligurian hatchet in a ditch, as sentient of everything as though no woman were at his side. Such is my booby! he sees not, he hears naught. Who himself is, or whether he be or be not, he also knows not. Now I wish to chuck him head first from thy bridge, so as to suddenly rouse (if possible) this droning dullard and to leave behind in the sticky slush his sluggish spirit, as a mule casts its iron shoe in the tenacious slough.
XVIII.
Hunc lucum tibi dedico, consecroque, Priape,
Qua domus tua Lampsaci est, quaque silva, Priape,
Nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora
Hellespontia, caeteris ostreosior oris.