| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | A Courtesan’s Whim | | By Francis Saltus Saltus (1849–1889) |
| | (From Dreams after Sunset, 1891) | | “Et je vous verrais nu du haut jeisques en bas, |
| Que toute votre pean ne, me tenterait pas.” |
| —MOLIÈRE. |
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TO calm desires that in my soul increase, | |
| Delicious boys with poems of blond hair, | |
| Supple dusk-eyed, whose eager kisses rare | |
| Are sweet as dew, no longer bring me peace. | |
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| I tire of the effeminate charm of Greece, | 5 |
| These Apollonian men with broad breasts bare, | |
| Superbly statuesque, supremely fair;— | |
| A god himself would tempt not my desire. | |
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| But in vague ways I most insanely yearn | |
| To meet some lean, dwarfed, fetid, hairy thing | 10 |
| With loathsome skin and bulging eyes of rheum, | |
| Then with wild sighs to make the monster burn | |
| With Love’s delight and bid his hot arms cling | |
| Around my beauty in the perfumed gloom. | | | |
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