T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
A Courtesans Whim
By Francis Saltus Saltus (18491889)(From Dreams after Sunset, 1891)
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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. | |