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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  From “The Songs of Bilitis”XXXIII. Remorse

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

From “The Songs of Bilitis”XXXIII. Remorse

By Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925)
 
(1894. Translated from the French by Horace Manchester Brown. 1904)

AT first I would not reply, and my shame showed upon my cheeks, and the beating of my heart brought pain to my breasts.
  1
  Then I resisted, I told him “No! No!”—I turned my head away, and his kiss did not open my lips,—nor love, my tight-closed knees.  2
  Then he begged me to forgive him, kissed my hair, I felt his burning breath, and he went away…. Now I am alone.  3
  I gaze upon the empty place, the deserted wood, the trampled earth. And I bite my fingers until they bleed, and I stifle my sobs in the grass.  4