Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

A Courtesan’s Whim

By Francis Saltus Saltus (1849–1889)

(From Dreams after Sunset, 1891)   “Et je vous verrais nu du haut jeisques en bas, Que toute votre pean ne, me tenterait pas.” —MOLIÈRE.

TO calm desires that in my soul increase,
Delicious boys with poems of blond hair,
Supple dusk-eyed, whose eager kisses rare
Are sweet as dew, no longer bring me peace.
I tire of the effeminate charm of Greece,	5
These Apollonian men with broad breasts bare,
Superbly statuesque, supremely fair;—
A god himself would tempt not my desire.
But in vague ways I most insanely yearn
To meet some lean, dwarfed, fetid, hairy thing	10
With loathsome skin and bulging eyes of rheum,
Then with wild sighs to make the monster burn
With Love’s delight and bid his hot arms cling
Around my beauty in the perfumed gloom.