Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

From “The Songs of Bilitis”LXVII. The Despairing Embrace

By Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925)

(1894. Translated from the French by Horace Manchester Brown. 1904) LOVE me, not with smiles, or with flutes, or with the plaited flowers, but with thy heart and with thy tears, even as I love thee with my sorrowing breast, and my moans.	1
When thy breasts alternate with my breasts, when I feel thy life touch my life, when thy knees stand up behind me, then my panting mouth knows not more how to join itself to thine.	2
Press me to thee as I press thee to me! See, the lamp has died down; the darkness is upon us; but I press thy moving body, and I hear thy perpetual plaint.	3
Moan! Moan! oh, woman! Eros leads us in sorrow. Thou shalt suffer less when thou liest upon a bed to bring a child into the world, than when thou givest birth to thy love.	4