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.