Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/185

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sensual emotions in me. But there was no special, final goal for them in my mind. It was merely a matter of vague wishing that I could lay my hand on his thigh. I felt the pains of Tantalus because this desire was not gratified".

Another In-
stance.

An Hungarian Uranian, thirty-two years of age, in an official position, and of entirely masculine type outwardly, wrote this of his own boyish predisposition:

"From first youth my sexual inclination for the male was felt. I had an unlimited horror of normal relations, with women. I have often made vain attempts at it. But with the merest sexual touch of a male physique I have complete satisfaction. My night-dreams, from earliest youth, have depicted only male shapes to me. O, had I only known of Uranianism sooner! I have suffered for seventeen years unspeakably" …

The "Byron"
Description of
Boyish Uranian-
ism.

Although Lord Byron is little known as one among the world's vast array of homosexual men, and has passed into social history for a normal—or abnormal—Don Juan of Don Juans, the inner life of the great romantic poet was strongly tinged by homosexual relations with several special male friends. This is shown early and late in his career. Both psychically and physically, the history of it is conclusive; but it is considerably reserved. Many of the chapters of it never have been even near to publicity, probably never are to be so. Of the prose references to Byron's boyish "friendships that were passions", as he styles them in his letters, diaries, etc., we need not here speak. But a curious versified allusion to the topic has been at least ascribed to the poet. In 1866, appeared in London the poem "Don Leon", as being an authentic fragment of Byronic verse, but not published till

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