ABSTRACT
[Stehling 82] Invective Against a Snarling Queen Listen, you scum of youth—what you say is venom; What you do is filth; your heart is full of shit! See for yourself who you are. Laugh at your faults, not mine, Or rather weep at them and try to be improved. You stay up all night and sleep all day, Praising the lecherous and cursing the virtuous. You sneer at men content with little, and love the rich, Oppress the unfortunate, and extol the prosperous. You look sadly on joy and look joyfully on sadness. Stirred by a double wind, your mind in one minute Wants what it didn’t want and shuns what it once wanted. After you’ve eaten, you swear you tasted nothing—and don’t care Who dies of hunger, since your belly is full. You’re broken by adversity and boast of your prosperity; You ruin married women, and break promises made to whores. You go to bed like an animal and don’t hold back on your loins. You prefer defiling yourself even to making money. You’d rather lie about things than bring your ship to port. You’re dedicated to usury, and don’t lack the crime of theft. Friendly with playboys, you have a taste for expensive things. You run after dinners, and lick over the left-over plates. First you swill down the wine, and then you lap up the dregs, And then you vomit and bring out the wine you’ve packed away. Look at your filth! In what a supercilious way you criticize others! [Stehling 84] With his boyish beauty and laughter, His happy look, sweet voice, witty talk, he won over Those men his age that he chased and made them easily, For with some similar kindling, a mutual fire would burn. [Stehling 85] A Complaint About Gay Clergymen This chorus of goats shouldn’t be sitting on the right side, Because God will want to put them on His left. Either remove this smelly flock away from our quarters, Or be informed that we’re going to leave, dear Bishop! [Stehling 86] About a Gay Bishop The man who governs this diocese out-Ganymedes Ganymede. Let it be heard why he excludes all married men from the clergy: He himself finds no pleasure in a wife’s service. A prostitute is already disgusting, but a sodomite is viler; A male prostitute is much worse than a female slut. Copulation with a woman yields the harvest of children; When a sodomite copulates, he only leaves behind pollution.
