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The Songs of Bilitis QUOTES

The Songs of Bilitis QUOTES

1 " I left the bed as she had left it, unmade and rumpled, coverlets awry, so that her body's print might rest still warm beside my own.

Until the next day I did not go to bathe, I wore no clothes and did not dress my hair, for fear I might erase some sweet caress.

That morning I did not eat, nor yet at dusk, and put no rouge nor powder on my lips, so that her kiss might cling a little longer.

I left the shutters closed, and did not open the door, for fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind. "

― Pierre Louÿs , The Songs of Bilitis

2 " When he came back, I hid my face within my hands. He said: "Fear nothing. Who has seen our kiss? --Who saw us? The night and the moon."

"And the stars and the first flush of dawn. The moon has seen its visage in the lake, and told it to the water 'neath the willows. The water told it to the rower's oar.

"And the oar has told it to the boat, and the boat has passed the secret to the fisher. Alas! alas! if that were only all! But the fisher told the secret to a woman.

"The fisher told the secret to a woman: my father and my mother and my sisters, and all of Hellas now shall know the tale. "

― Pierre Louÿs , The Songs of Bilitis

3 " He crushes me so hard that I shall break, frail little creature that I know I am; but once he is in me nothing else exists, and I could have my four limbs cut away without awakening from my ecstasy. "

― Pierre Louÿs , The Songs of Bilitis

4 " Mother inexhaustible and incorruptible, creatures, born the first, engendered by thyself and by thyself conceived, issue of thyself alone and seeking joy within thyself, Astarte! Oh! Perpetually fertilized, virgin and nurse of all that is, chaste and lascivious, pure and revelling, ineffable, nocturnal, sweet, breather of fire, foam of the sea! Thou who accordest grace in secret, thou who unites, thou who lovest, thou who seizes with furious desire the multiplied races of savage beasts and the couplets the sexes in the wood. Oh, irresistible Astarte! hear me, take me, possess me, oh, Moon! and thirteen times each year draw from my womb the sweet libation of my blood! "

― Pierre Louÿs , The Songs of Bilitis

5 " I undressed to climb a tree; my naked thighs embraced the smooth and humid bark; my sandals climbed upon the branches. High up, but still beneath the leaves and shaded from the heat, I straddled a wide-spread fork and swung my feet into the void. It had rained. Drops of water fell and flowed upon my skin. My hands were soiled with the moss and my heels were reddened by the crushed blossoms. I felt the lovely tree living when the wind passed through it; so I locked my legs tighter, and crushed my open lips to the hairy nape of a bough. "

― Pierre Louÿs , The Songs of Bilitis