Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

From “The Songs of Bilitis”LXX. Absence

By Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925)

(1894. Translated from the French by Horace Manchester Brown. 1904) SHE has gone out, she is far from me, but I see her, for all things in the room, all pertain to her, and I, like all the rest.	1
This bed still warm, over which I let my lips wander, is disordered with the imprint of her form. Upon this soft cushion has lain her little head enveloped in its wealth of hair.	2
This basin is that in which she hath bathed; this comb has penetrated the knots of her tangled locks. These slippers beg for her naked feet. These pockets of gauze contained her breasts.	3
But what I dare not touch, is the mirror in which she gazed upon her hot bruises, and where perhaps remains still the reflection of her moist lips.	4