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.