This paper argues that a night scene in Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Denier du rêve took its inspiration from passages of classical poetry by authors such as Alcman, Euripides, Theocritus, Virgil, and above all Apollonius of Rhodes. Significantly, the translations of the relevant Greek passages are to be found in Yourcenar’s La couronne et la lyre, i.e. the anthology collecting the translations of Greek poetry which she made throughout her life.