THE LAST LOVER

by: Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925)

      OME, boy, pass me not by without having first loved me. I am still beautiful at night. Thou shalt see that my autumn is warmer than the spring-time of another.

      Seek not for love among virgins. Love is a difficult art in which young girls are little learned. I have studied it all my life in order to give it to my last lover.

      My last lover, that shalt be thou, I know it. Behold my mouth, for which an entire people has paled with desire. Behold my hair, the same hair that Psappha the Great has sung.

      I will gather in thy favor all that is left of my lost youth. I will destroy the memories themselves. I will give to thee the flute of Lykas, the girdle of Mnasidika.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY: HORACE M. BROWN

"The Last Lover" is reprinted from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown Publishers, 1921.

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