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MORNING RAIN<br />
The night is fading. The stars are far away. Now the very latest courtesans have<br />
all gone homewards with their paramours. And I, in the morning rain, write<br />
these verses in the sand.<br />
The leaves are loaded down with shining water. The little streams that run<br />
across the roads carry earth and trains <strong>of</strong> dead leaves. The rain, drop by drop,<br />
makes holes in my song.<br />
Ah, how sad and lonely I am here! The youngest do not look at me at all; the<br />
oldest all have quite forgotten me. 'Tis well. They will learn my verses, and the<br />
children <strong>of</strong> their children. . .<br />
Here is something neither Myrtale, nor Thaïs, nor Glykera will say, the day their<br />
lovely cheeks grow sagged with age. Those who will love when I am gone, will<br />
sing my songs together, in the dark.<br />
TRUE DEATH<br />
Aphrodite! inexorable Goddess, thou hast desired that happy youth with lovely<br />
curls should fade from me, too, in a few short days. Why did I not die altogether<br />
then?<br />
I looked at myself in my mirror: I can no longer smile or even cry. Oh! lovely face<br />
that Mnasidika loved, I can't believe that you were really mine.<br />
Can it be that all is ended now! I have not yet lived five times eight short years; I<br />
feel that I was born but yesterday, and now it must already be proclaimed: No<br />
one will ever love me any more.<br />
I have shorn all my hair, and twined it in my girdle and I <strong>of</strong>fer it to thee, eternal<br />
Kypris! I shall not cease from loving thee. This is the last verse <strong>of</strong> the pious<br />
<strong>Bilitis</strong>.<br />
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