Lesbian

Carmilla

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex

The analysis of these cases leads directly up to a question of the first importance: What is sexual inversion? Is it, as many would have us believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should be tolerated or even fostered? Is it a diseased condition which qualifies its subject for the lunatic asylum? or is it a natural monstrosity, a human "sport," the manifestations of which must be regulated when they become antisocial?

Lover's Silence

                                                        LOVER'S SILENCE.

Popular Leaves

The wind blows down the dusty street;
And through my soul that grieves- 
It brings a sudden odour sweet:
A smell of popular leaves. 

O leaves the herald in the spring,
O freshness young and pure,
Into my weary soul you bring
The vigor to endure

The wood is near, but out of sight,
Where all the populars grow;
Straight up and tall and silver white;
They quiver in a row.

My love was out of sight, but near;
And through my soul that grieves
A sudden memory wafts her here
As fresh as popular leaves.  

Borderland.

Am I waking, am I sleeping?

As the first faint dawn comes creeping

Thro' the pane, I am aware

Of an unseen presence hovering,

Round, above, in dusky air ;

A downy bird, with an odorous wing,

That fans my forehead, and sheds perfume,

As sweet as love, as soft as death,

Drowsy-slow through the summer-gloom.

My heart in some dream-rapture saith,

It is she. Half in a swoon,

I spread my arms in slow delight.—

O prolong, prolong the night,

Rosa Rosarum

GIVE me, O friend, the secret of thy heart
   Safe in my breast to hide,
So that the leagues which keep our lives apart
    May not our souls divide.

Love Stronger than Death

I DREAMED my Lady and I were dead
  And dust was either heart;
Our bodies in one grave were laid,
  Our souls went far apart,
Hers with the saints for aye to dwell
And mine to lie and pine in Hell.

But when my Lady looked for me
  And found her quest in vain,
For all that blesséd company
  She nothing knew but pain.
She cried: "How feigned your praising is!
Your God is love, and love I miss."

The hills whereon her tear-drops fell
  Were white with lily-flowers,

A Ballad of Forgotten Tunes: to V.L.

FORGOTTEN seers of lost repute
  That haunt the banks of Acheron,
Where have you dropped the broken lute
  You played in Troy or Calydon ?
  O ye that sang in Babylon
By foreign willows cold and grey,
  Fall'n are the harps ye hanged thereon,
Dead are the tunes of yesterday !

De Coucy, is your music mute,
  The quaint old plain-chant woe-begone
That served so many a lover's suit ?
  Oh, dead as Adam or Guédron !
  Then, sweet De Caurroy, try upon

Sapphics

ALL the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
  Stood and beheld me.

Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips ; and I too,
  Full of the vision,

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters ;
  Saw the reluctant

Lesbian