Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

From “The Songs of Bilitis”CXL. The Last Lover

By Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925)

(1894. Translated from the French by Horace Manchester Brown. 1904) COME, boy, pass me not by without having first loved me. I am still beautiful in the night. Thou shalt see that my autumn is warmer than the spring-time of another.	1
Seek not for love among virgins. Love is a difficult art in which young girls are little learned. I have studied it all my life in order to give it to my last lover.	2
My last lover, that shall be thou, I know it. Behold my mouth, for which an entire people has paled with desire. Behold my hair, the same hair that Psappha the Great has sung.	3
I will gather in thy favor all that is left of my lost youth. I will destroy the memories themselves. I will give to thee the flute of Lykas, the girdle of Mnasidika.	4