and because they are so far from my mouth, give them kisses for
me.”
LX
THE DOLL
I have given her a doll, a doll of wax with cheeks of roses. Its
arms are attached by little pegs and its legs can be moved.
When we are together, she couches it between us, and it is our
child. In the evening she cradles it and gives it the breast before
putting it to sleep.
She has woven it three little tunics and we gave it jewels on the
day of the Aphrodisian Festival; jewels and flowers also.
She watches over its virtue, and will not let it go out without
her; not in the sun, above all, for the little doll would melt into
drops of wax.
LXI
TENDERNESSES
Sweetly close thine arms, like a girdle about me. O touch, touch my
skin thus! Neither water nor the breeze of noon-tide are so soft as
thy hand.
Today, endear me, little sister, it is thy turn. Remember thou the
tendernesses which I taught thee in the night past, and kneel thou
silently near me, for I am wearied.
Thy lips descend upon my lips. All thine unbound hair follows them
like a caress after a kiss. It glides over my left breast, it hides
thine eyes from me.
Give me thy hand, it is hot! Press mine; hold it always. Hands
better than the mouths unite, and their passion is equalled by
nothing.
LXII
GAMES
More than her balls or her doll, I am for her a game. With all
parts of my body, she amuses herself like a child, through the long
hours, without speaking.
She loosens my hair and reforms it according to her caprice,
knotting it under my chin like a thick cloth, or twisting it upon
the nape of my neck, or braiding it to the end.
She regards with astonishment the color of my lashes, the folds of
my neck. Sometimes she makes me kneel and place my hands upon the
bed:
Then (it is one of her games) she slips her little head underneath
and imitates the trembling kid which sucks from the belly of its
mother.
LXIII
PENUMBRA
Under the cover of transparent wool, we slipped, she and I. Even
our heads were covered, and the lamp shone through the cloth above
us.
Thus I saw her dear body in a mysterious light. We were very near,
one to the other, more free, more intimate, more naked. “In the
same shift,” she said.
We had left our hair bound up in order to be still more uncovered,
and in the close air of the bed, the odors of two women ascended,
of two natural cassolets.
Nothing in the world, not even the lamp, saw us that night. Which
of us was loved, she alone, and I, could say. But the men know
nothing of it.
LXIV
THE SLEEPER
She sleeps in her unbound hair, her hands joined behind her neck.
Does she dream? Her mouth is open; she breathes gently.
With a bit of white swan, I dry off the perspiration of her arms,
the fever of her cheeks, but without awakening her. Her closed
eyelids are two blue flowers.
Very softly, I will raise myself; I will go · to draw water, to
milk the cow and ask fire of the neighbors. I would arrange my hair
and dress before she opens her eyes.
Sleep, dwell for long between her fair, curved eyelids, and
continue the happy night with a dream of good augury.
LXV
THE KISS
I will kiss, from one end to the other, the long dark wings
spreading from thy neck, O sweet bird, captive dove, whose heart
bounds beneath my hand.
I will take thy lips within my lips as an infant takes the breast
of its mother. Shudder!... for the kiss penetrates profoundly and
is sufficient to thy love.
I will move my tongue lightly along thine arms, and upon thy neck;
and I will wind along thy sensitive sides the lengthening caress of
my nails.
Hear, roaring in thine ears, all the rumor of the sea....
Mnasidika! thy look makes me suffer. Like thy lips, I would close
thy burning eyelids with my kiss.
LXVI
JEALOUS CARE
Do not arrange thy hair, for fear lest the over-heated iron burn
thy neck or thy locks. Leave it upon thy shoulders and spread over
thine arms.
Do not dress thyself, for fear lest the girdle redden the slender
folds of thy hips. Remain naked like a little girl.
Do not even rise, for fear lest thy fragile feet be injured in
walking. Repose in the bed, O victim of Eros, and I will dress thy
poor wound.
For I would not see upon thy body other marks, Mnasidika, than the
blemish of an over-long kiss, the scratch of a sharp nail, or the
reddening bar of my embrace.
LXVII
THE DESPAIRING EMBRACE
Love me, not with smiles, flutes, or plaited flowers, but with thy
heart and thy tears, as I love thee with my breast and my
lamentations.
When thy breasts alternate with my breasts, when I feel thy life
touching my life, when thy knees stand up behind me, then my
panting mouth knows not how more to unite with thine.
Clasp me as I clasp thee! See, the lamp has died out, we turn and
twist in the night; but I press thy moving body and I hear thy
perpetual plaint....
Moan! moan! moan! O woman! Eros leads us in sorrow. Thou wilt
suffer less on the bed in bringing a child into the world than when
giving birth to thy love.
LXVIII
THE HEART
Breathless, I take her hand and apply it forcibly to the moist skin
of my left breast. And I turn my head here and there and I move my
lips without speaking.
My excited heart, abrupt and hard, beats and beats in my breast as
an imprisoned satyr would knock, imprisoned in a leathern bottle.
She says to me: “Thy heart makes thee ill....”
“O Mnasidika,” I respond, “the heart of a woman is not there. That
is only a poor bird, a dove which stirs its feeble wings. The heart
of a woman is more terrible.
“Like a little myrtle berry, it burns with a red flame and under an
abundant foam. It is there that I feel myself bitten by voracious
Aphrodite.”
LXIX
WORDS IN THE NIGHT
We rest, our eyes closed, the silence is deep about our couch.
Ineffable Nights of summer! But she, believing me asleep, lays her
warm hand upon my arm.
She murmurs: “Bilitis, thou sleepest?” My heart throbs, but,
without response, I respire regularly like a woman couched in
dreams. Then she begins to speak:
“Because thou hearest me not,” she says, “ah! how I love thee!” And
she repeats my name: “Bilitis.... Bilitis....” And she touches me
with the tips of her trembling fingers.
“It is mine, this mouth! mine alone! Is there another so beautiful
in the world? Ah! my happiness, my happiness! Mine are these naked
arms, this neck and hair....”
LXX
ABSENCE
She has gone out, she is far away, but I see her, for all things in
this chamber are full of her, all are related to her, and I, like
the rest.
This bed still warm, over which I pass my mouth, is impressed with
the form of her body. On this soft pillow has lain her little head
enveloped in her hair.
There is the basin in which she has bathed, the comb which has
penetrated the knots of her tangled hair. These slippers long for
her naked feet. The pockets of gauze enclosed her breasts.
But that which I dare not touch with my finger is the mirror in
which she viewed her hot bruises and in which, perhaps, still
exists the reflection of her moist lips.
LXXI
LOVE
Alas! if I think of her, my throat becomes dry, my head droops, my
breasts grow hard and pain me, I shiver and I weep as I walk.
If I see her, my heart stops, my hands tremble, my feet grow cold,
the crimson of fire mounts to my cheeks, my temples throb
grievously.
If I touch her, I become mad, my arms weaken, my knees swoon. I
fall before her and lie like a woman about to die.
Always, whenever she speaks to me, I feel myself wounded. Her love
is torture and the passers-by hear my plaints.... Alas! How can I
call her Well-Beloved?
LXXII
PURIFICATION
Thou art there! Take off thy bandelets and thy clasps and thy
tunic. Remove even thy sandals, even the ribbons of thy legs, even
the band of thy breast.
Wash the black from thine eyebrows and the red from thy lips.
Efface the white of thy shoulders and uncurl thy hair in the water.
For I would have thee all pure as thou wert born upon the bed at
the feet of thy fecund mother and before thy proud father.
So chaste that my hand in thy hand will make thee redden even to
thy lips and one word of mine in thine ear will fill, with an
excess of love, thy wandering eyes.
LXXIII
THE CRADLE OF MNASIDIKA
My little child, so few years have I had only thee: I love thee,
not as a lover but as though thou hadst come forth from my laboring
entrails.
When, stretched upon my knees, thy two frail arms about me, thou
seekest my breast, thy mouth clinging, and press my nipples softly
between thy palpitating lips:
Then I dream that, at some time, I have truly nursed this delicate
mouth, supple and moist, this vase of crimson myrrhine in which the
happiness of Bilitis is mysteriously enclosed.
Sleep. I will cradle thee with one hand upon my knee which rocks
thee. Sleep so. I will sing for thee little mournful songs which
bring sleep to the newly-born.
LXXIV
A PROMENADE BY THE SEA
As we were walking on the seashore, without speaking, and enveloped
to the chin in our robes of sombre wool, joyous young girls passed
by.
“Ah! it is Bilitis and Mnasidika! See, the pretty little squirrel
we have caught: it is soft as a bird and timid as a rabbit.
“At Lydia’s house we will put it in a cage, give it plenty of milk
with lettuce leaves. It is a female, she will live a long time.”
And the mad ones set out, running. As for us, without speaking, we
seated ourselves, I on a rock, she upon the sand, and we gazed at
the sea.
LXXV
THE OBJECT
Greeting, Bilitis, Mnasidika, greeting.--Be seated. How is thy
husband?--Too well. Do not tell him that you have seen me. He would
slay me if he knew I had been here.--Have no fear.
“And this is your chamber? and this your bed? Pardon me. I am
curious.--Thou knowest, however, the bed of Myrrhina.--So
little.--It is said to be pretty.--And lascivious, O my dear! let
us not speak of it.
“What wishest thou of me?--That thou lend me....--Speak.--I dare
not name the object.--We do not have one.--Truly?--Mnasidika is a
virgin.--Then, where can one buy it?--From the harness-maker,
Drakon.
“Tell also, where thou buyest thy thread for embroidery? Mine
breaks if one looks at it.--I make mine myself, but that which
Nais sells is excellent.--At what price?--Three oboli.--It is dear.
And the object?--Two drachmæ.--Farewell.”
LXXVI
EVENING NEAR THE FIRE
The winter is hard, Mnasidika. All is frozen, except our bed. But
rise and come with me, for I have lit a great fire with dead twigs
and broken wood.
We will warm ourselves, crouching quite naked, our hair upon our
backs, and we will drink milk from the same cup and we will eat
cakes with honey.
How gay and noisy the flame is! Art thou not too near? Thy skin
reddens. Let me kiss it wherever the fire has burned it.
Amidst the ardent firebrands, I will heat the iron and I will dress
thy hair here. With dead coals I will write thy name upon the wall.
LXXVII
SUPPLICATIONS
What dost thou wish? If it must be, I will sell my last jewels so
that an attentive slave may wait upon the desire of thine eyes, and
every thirst of thy lips.
If the milk of our goats seems insipid to thee, I will hire for
thee, as for an infant, a nurse with swollen breasts who will
suckle thee each morning.
If our bed seems rough to thee, I will buy thee all the soft
cushions, all the coverlets of silk, all the cloths, soft with
feathers, of the Amathusian merchants.
All. But I should suffice thee, and though we sleep upon the earth,
thou shouldst find it softer than the warm bed of a stranger.
LXXVIII
THE EYES
Great eyes of Mnasidika, how happy you make me when love darkens
your lids and quickens you and shadows you with tears:
But how maddened, when you turn elsewhere, distracted by a woman
who passes or by a remembrance which is not mine.
Then my cheeks hollow themselves, my hands tremble and I suffer....
It seems to me from all parts, and before you, my life goes away.
Great eyes of Mnasidika, cease not to regard me! or I will stab you
with my needle and then you will see only the terrible night.
LXXIX
FARDS
All, all my life, and my world, and the men, all that is not of
her, is nothing. All that is not of her, I give to thee, passer-by.
Does she know the labor I have accomplished to be fair to her eyes,
with my hair and with my fards, with my robes and my perfumes?
As long a time I would turn a millstone, I would wield the oar or
labor in the earth, if it were a necessary price to retain her
here.
But perhaps she will never know, Goddesses who watch over us. The
day she learns that I love her, she will seek another woman.
LXXX
THE SILENCE OF MNASIDIKA
She had laughed all the day, and she even had mocked me a little.
She had refused to obey me before many strange women.
When we returned, I affected not to speak to her, and, as she cast
herself upon my neck, saying: “Thou art offended?” I said to her:
“Ah! thou art not as formerly, thou art not as on the first day. I
no longer recognize thee, Mnasidika.” She did not respond to me.
But she put on all the jewels which she had not worn for a long
time, and the same yellow robe, broidered with blue, as on the day
of our meeting.
LXXXI
SCENE
“Where wast thou?--At the flower merchant’s. I have bought some
very beautiful irises. Here they are, I have brought them to
thee.--In so long a time thou hast bought four flowers?--The
flower-woman detained me.
“Thy cheeks are pale and thine eyes brilliant.--It is fatigue from
the walk.--Thy hair is moist and tangled.--It is the heat and the
wind which almost blew down my hair.
“Someone has untied thy girdle. I made the knot myself, looser than
this one.--So loose that it became undone; a slave who passed
retied it for me.
“There is a spot upon thy robe.--It is water which has fallen from
the flowers.--Mnasidika, my little soul, thine irises are fairer
than any in all Mytilene.--That I know well, that I know well.”
LXXXII
WAITING
The sun has passed all the night among the dead while I have
waited, seated upon my bed, weary from watching. The wick of the
exhausted lamp has burned to the end.
She will never return: there is the last star. I know well that she
will never return. I know even the name that I hate. Nevertheless,
I still wait.
That she would come now! yes, that she would come, her hair
disordered and without roses, her robe soiled, spotted, rumpled,
her tongue dry and her eyelids black!
When she opened the door, I would say to her.... But here she
is.... It is her robe that I touch, her hands, her hair, her skin!
I kiss her with distracted lips, and I weep.
LXXXIII
SOLITUDE
For whom, now, shall I paint my lips? For whom shall I polish my
nails? For whom shall I perfume my hair?
For whom are my breasts powdered with rouge, if they no longer
tempt her? For whom are my arms laved with milk, if they may never
more embrace her?
How can I sleep? How can I lay myself upon the bed? In the evening
my hand, in all my bed, could not find her warm hand.
I dare not return to my house, to the chamber so frightfully empty.
I dare not reopen the door. I dare not even reopen mine eyes.
LXXXIV
A LETTER
That is impossible, impossible. I supplicate thee upon my knees,
with tears, all the tears I have wept over this horrible letter,
not to abandon me thus.
Consider thou how terrible it is to lose thee forever for a second
time, after having had the great joy of hoping to reconquer thee.
Ah! my love! thou knowest not to what point I have adored thee!
Listen to me. Consent to see me one time more. Wilt thou be,
tomorrow, at sundown, before thy door? Tomorrow, or the day
following. I will come to take thee. Do not refuse me that.
Perhaps the last time, so, but still for this once, for this one
time! I demand it of thee, I beg it of thee, and know that, upon
thy reply, the rest of my life depends.
LXXXV
THE ATTEMPT
Thou wast jealous of us, Gyrinno, too ardent girl. How many
garlands didst thou suspend from the knocker of our door! Thou
didst wait for us in the passage, and thou didst follow us in the
street.
Now thou art, according to thy vows, extended upon the loved place
and thy head is upon the pillow about which floats the odor of
another woman. Thou art larger then she was. Thy different body
startles me.
See! I have yielded at last. Yes, it is I. Thou mayest play with my
breasts, caress my belly, open my knees. My entire body is
delivered to thy tireless lips--alas!
Ah! Gyrinno! with love my tears also overflow! Wipe them with thy
hair; do not kiss them, my dear; and enlace me yet closer to subdue
my tremblings.
LXXXVI
THE EFFORT
Again! enough of sighs and stretching arms! Recommence! Thinkest
thou, then, that love is a recreation? Gyrinno, it is a task, and
of all the most rude.
Awaken, thou! Thou shall not sleep! What to me are thy blue eyelids
and the bar of pain which burns thy thin legs. Astarte seethes in
my loins.
We entered our couch with the twilight. Behold already the wicked
dawn; but I am not wearied with so little. I will not sleep before
the second evening.
I will not sleep; neither shalt thou sleep. Oh! how bitter is the
taste of morning! Gyrinno, realize it. The embraces are more
difficult, but stranger and softer.
LXXXVII
GYRINNO
Think not that I have loved thee. I have eaten thee like a ripe
fig, I have drunk thee like an ardent water, I have carried thee
about me like a girdle of skin.
I have amused myself with thy body, because thou hast short hair,
pointed breasts upon thy lean chest, and nipples black like two
little dates.
Like water and fruits, a woman is also necessary, but already I
have forgotten thy name, thou who hast passed through my arms like
the shadow of another adored one.
Between thy flesh and mine, a burning dream has possessed me. I
pressed thee upon me as upon a wound and I cried: Mnasidika!
Mnasidika! Mnasidika!
LXXXVIII
THE LAST ESSAY
“What wishest thou, old woman?--To console thee.--It is useless
trouble.--They have told me that since thy parting thou goest from
love to love without finding forgetfulness or peace. I have come to
offer thee someone.
“Speak.--It is a young slave, born at Sardis. She has no equal in
the world for she is at the same time man and woman, although her
chest and her long hair and her clear voice produce the illusion.
“Her age?--Sixteen years.--Her form?--Large. She has known no one
here except Psappha who loves her desperately and would buy her of
me for twenty minæ. If thou wouldst hire her, she is thine.--And
what will I do with her?
“Behold, for twenty two nights I have essayed in vain to escape my
memories.... Done, I take this one more, but warn the poor little
one that she be not frightened if I sob in her arms.”
LXXXIX
THE WOUNDING MEMORY
I remember ... (at what hour of the day is it not before my eyes!)
I remember the manner in which She lifted her hair with her slender
fingers so pale.
I remember one night which she passed, her cheek upon my breast, so
softly that happiness held me awake, and the day following she had
upon her face the mark of my rounded nipple.
I see her holding her cup of milk and regarding me sideways, with a
smile. I see her, powdered, her hair dressed, opening her great
eyes before her mirror and retouching with her finger the red of
her lips.
And, above all, if my despair is a perpetual torture, it is because
I know, moment by moment, how she swoons in the arms of another,
and what she demands of her and what she gives.
XC
TO THE WAX DOLL
Doll of wax, dear plaything which she called her child, she has
wearied of thee also and she has forgotten thee like myself, who,
with her, was thy father or thy mother, I know not which.
The pressure of her lips has discolored thy little cheeks; and on
thy left hand see the broken finger which made her weep so much.
This little cyclas which thou wearest, it was she who broidered it
for thee.
She said thou couldst already read. Nevertheless thou wert not
weaned, and in the evening, bending over thee, she opened her tunic
and gave thee the breast, “so that thou wouldst not cry,” she said.
Doll, if I wished to see her again, I would give thee to Aphrodite,
as the dearest of my gifts. But I would rather think that she is
wholly dead.
XCI
FUNERAL CHANT
Sing a funeral chant, muses of Mytilene, sing! The earth is sombre
like a vestment of mourning and the yellow trees shiver like shaken
hair.
Heraios! O sweet and sorrowful month! the leaves fall gently like
snow, the sun penetrates deeply into the thinning forest.... I hear
nothing more, save the silence.
Behold, they have carried Pittakos, laden with years, to the tomb.
Many are dead of those I knew. And she who lives is to me as though
she were no longer.
This is the tenth autumn I have seen dying upon this plain. It is
time that I also vanished away. Weep for me, muses of Mytilene,
weep upon my steps!
EPIGRAMS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPROS
Αλλά με ναρκισσοις ἀναδήσατε, καὶ πλαγιαύλων γεύσατε
καὶ κροκίνοις χρίσατε γυἰα μύροις.
Καὶ Μυτιληναίῳ τόν πνεύμονα τέγξατε βάκχῳ καὶ συζεύξατε
μοι φωλάδα παρθενικήν.
PHILODEMOS.
“--Bind my head with narcissus and let me
taste the crooked flute. Anoint my limbs with
saffron ointment, wet my gullet with wine of
Mytilene and mate me with a virgin who will love
her nest.”
(Anth. Pal. XI-34. Paton.)
XCII
HYMN TO THE ASTARTE
Mother inexhaustible, incorruptible, creatrix, first-born,
self-engendered, self-created, issue of thyself alone and delight
of thyself, Astarte!
O perpetually fecund, O virgin and nurse of all, chaste and
lascivious, pure and fruitive, ineffable, nocturnal, soft, breather
of fire, foam of the sea!
Thou who accordest favors in secret, thou who unitest, thou who
lovest, thou who graspest the multiple races of savage beasts in
furious desire and joinest the sexes in the forests!
O Astarte, irresistible, hear me, take me, possess me, O moon, and,
thirteen times each year, draw from my entrails the libation of my
blood!
XCIII.
HYMN TO THE NIGHT
The black masses of the trees are immovable as the mountains. The
stars fill the immense sky. A warm breeze like a human breath
caresses my eyes and my cheeks.
O Night, who givest birth to the Gods! how sweet thou art upon my
lips! how warm thou art in my hair! how thou enterest into me now,
and how I feel myself pregnant with all thy springtime!
The flowers that shall blossom shall all be born of me. The wind
that respires is my breath. The perfume that passes is my desire.
All the stars are in my eyes.
Thy voice, is it the roar of the sea? Is it the silence of the
plain? Thy voice; I comprehend it not, but it bends my head to my
feet, and my tears lave my two hands.
XCIV
THE MENADES
Through the forests that dominate the sea, the Menades are rushing.
Maskale, with hot breasts, shrieks, brandishing the phallos of
sycamore smeared with vermilion.
All, under their bassaris skins and their crowns of vine branches,
run and cry and leap, the crotales clapping in their hands, and the
thyrses cracking the skins of the resounding drums.
With wetted hair, agile legs, reddened and pushing breasts,
sweating cheeks, foaming lips, O Dionysos, they offer thee, in
return, the love thou hast cast within them.
And the wind of the sea lifts toward the sky the ruddy hair of
Helikomis, twisting it like a furious flame upon a torch of white
wax.
XCV
THE SEA OF CYPRIS
Upon the highest promontory, I stretched myself out. The sea was
black like a field of violets. The milky-way gushed out from the
great divine breast.
A thousand Menades slept about me in the mangled flowers. The long
grasses mingled with their hair. And then, behold, the sun was born
from the waters of the east.
They were the same waters and the same shores that, one day, saw
appear the white body of Aphrodite.... Suddenly, I hid my eyes in
my hands.
For I saw, trembling upon the water, a thousand tiny lips of light:
the pure sex or the smile of Cypris Philommeïdes.
XCVI
THE PRIESTESSES OF ASTARTE
The priestesses of Astarte make love at the rising of the moon;
then they arise and bathe in a vast basin with a marge of silver.
With their curved fingers, they comb their hair, and their hands,
tinted with crimson, blended with their black curls, seem like
branches of coral in a sombre and wavering sea.
They never depilate themselves, so that the triangle of die goddess
is marked on their belly as on a temple; but they paint themselves
with brushes and perfume themselves deeply.
The priestesses of Astarte make love at the setting of the moon;
then, in a carpeted hall where burns a tall lamp of gold, they lie
down at random.
XCVII
THE MYSTERIES
Within the enclosure thrice mysterious, where the men never enter,
we have made a festival for thee, Astarte of the Night, Mother of
the World, Fountain of the Life of the Gods!