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PRAYERS<br />
What do you want? Say it. If you should wish I'll sell my last jewel, so that a<br />
watchful slave may wait upon the wishes <strong>of</strong> your eyes, upon whatever thirst your<br />
lips may have.<br />
If our goat's milk should seem flat to you, I'll hire, as for a child, a wet-nurse with<br />
great swollen breasts to suckle you each morning <strong>of</strong> the year.<br />
If our bed should be too hard upon your back, I'll purchase all the puffy pillows,<br />
all the silken coverlets, and all the Amathusian merchants' cloths, furred with<br />
feathers.<br />
All. But I myself must also fill your need, and if we sleep upon the earth, the<br />
earth must be much s<strong>of</strong>ter to your back than the comfortable bed <strong>of</strong> any stranger.<br />
EYES<br />
Mnasidika's great eyes, how you delight me when desire darkens your lids and<br />
fires you and drowns you in its tears!<br />
How wild you make me when you turn aside, distracted by some passing lovely<br />
girl, or by a memory which is not my own.<br />
Then my cheeks grow hollow, my hands tremble and I suffer. . . It seems to me<br />
my life blood slips away, before your eyes, from every part <strong>of</strong> me.<br />
Mnasidika's great eyes, oh, do not cease to feast yourselves on me! or I'll prick<br />
you with my needle, and you'll see nothing but the dreadful night.<br />
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