1. The bedbug, plump of flesh, his food makes fat—
His planks are like engraved tablets smooth.

2. The flea, all naked of his furs, a woe!
A brother to the louse! He cannot rest

3. Save fitfully—no sound sleep gets he.
Until resigned that she will get no friend

4. But one who sleeps like voices of the priests
Intoning from their Holy Scripture,

5. She creeps, her little pillows ‘neath her waist,
Out to the taverns where the wines are poured.

6. And finds repose. Her eyes the cups avoid
For in them doom for her that night abides.

7. Then, when the gloom was thick and she was rinsed
In sedges on the sleeping-mats awash,

8. Close-clasping him, the whilst the chilly water
Mixed with the dregs was filling up the bowls,—

9. Her ears like pickerel in the tank at risk
From whiteness of the drinking-cups that float

10. About the brim,—till he, quite rapturous,
Cried that the thing was done, the plaits undone,

11. She like a ram withdrew with mighty will
Not to be caught by him who is denied

12. No wit to trap her in the vale of death.
Then 'neath her middle passed, while she, her mouth

13. Set for the sudden blow inevitably doomed.
And in the shadow of the night she sank

14. O'erwhelmed in a torrent of the column's foot.
So turned the archer of the tribe denied,

15. Walking on two props of a broken man,
Still sadly pondering that he missed the mark

16. In narrow house whose pile of fish was small.
A scabby camel is of all beasts the worst,