Thou who accordest favors in secret, thou who unitest, thou who lovest, thou who graspest the multiple races of savage beasts in furious desire and joinest the sexes in the forests! O Astarte, irresistible, hear me, take me, possess me, O moon, and, thirteen times each year, draw from my entrails the libation of my blood! XCIII. HYMN TO THE NIGHT The black masses of the trees are immovable as the mountains. The stars fill the immense sky. A warm breeze like a human breath caresses my eyes and my cheeks. O Night, who givest birth to the Gods! how sweet thou art upon my lips! how warm thou art in my hair! how thou enterest into me now, and how I feel myself pregnant with all thy springtime! The flowers that shall blossom shall all be born of me. The wind that respires is my breath. The perfume that passes is my desire. All the stars are in my eyes. Thy voice, is it the roar of the sea? Is it the silence of the plain? Thy voice; I comprehend it not, but it bends my head to my feet, and my tears lave my two hands. XCIV THE MENADES Through the forests that dominate the sea, the Menades are rushing. Maskale, with hot breasts, shrieks, brandishing the phallos of sycamore smeared with vermilion. All, under their bassaris skins and their crowns of vine branches, run and cry and leap, the crotales clapping in their hands, and the thyrses cracking the skins of the resounding drums. With wetted hair, agile legs, reddened and pushing breasts, sweating cheeks, foaming lips, O Dionysos, they offer thee, in return, the love thou hast cast within them. And the wind of the sea lifts toward the sky the ruddy hair of Helikomis, twisting it like a furious flame upon a torch of white wax. XCV THE SEA OF CYPRIS Upon the highest promontory, I stretched myself out. The sea was black like a field of violets. The milky-way gushed out from the great divine breast. A thousand Menades slept about me in the mangled flowers. The long grasses mingled with their hair. And then, behold, the sun was born from the waters of the east. They were the same waters and the same shores that, one day, saw appear the white body of Aphrodite.... Suddenly, I hid my eyes in my hands. For I saw, trembling upon the water, a thousand tiny lips of light: the pure sex or the smile of Cypris Philommeïdes. XCVI THE PRIESTESSES OF ASTARTE The priestesses of Astarte make love at the rising of the moon; then they arise and bathe in a vast basin with a marge of silver. With their curved fingers, they comb their hair, and their hands, tinted with crimson, blended with their black curls, seem like branches of coral in a sombre and wavering sea.