Sappho

“ Men call her the greatest lyric poet that the world has known, basing their judgment on the few perfect fragments that remain of her song. But her voice is more than the voice of a lyric poet, it is the voice of a world that has been, of a freshness and beauty that will never be again, and to give that voice a last touch of charm remains the fact that it comes to us as an echo. ”

“ Echo will bear to men the songs we sing.
XXX
FOR THEE
For thee, unto the altar will I lead
A white goat—
To the altar by the sea;
And there, where waves advance and waves recede,
A full libation will I pour for thee.
XXXI
FRIEND
Friend, face me so and raise
Unto my face thy face,
Unto mine eyes thy gaze,
Unto my soul its grace.
XXXII
THE MOON HAS SET
The moon has set beyond the seas,
And vanished are the Pleiades;
Half the long weary night has gone,
Time passes—yet I lie alone. ”

“ Now the autumn skies are low,
Youth and summer sped;
Shepherd hills are far away,
Cercolas is dead.
Mitylene's marble courts
Echo with my name;—
Maidenhood, we never dreamed,
Long ago of fame.
EVER MAIDEN
I shall be ever maiden,
Ever the little child,
In my passionate quest for the lovely,
By earth's glad wonder beguiled.
I shall be ever maiden,
Standing in soul apart,
For the Gods give the secret of beauty
Alone to the virgin heart.
CLËIS
Daughter of mine, so fair,
With a form like a golden flower,
Wherefore thy pensive air
And the dreams in the myrtle bower? ”

“ Bride of spring, tomorn from dewy clusters shall she unashamed
Tear the veil from blushes hid by swathings red that round them flamed.
Tomorn who ne'er hath loved shall love, and who hath loved shall love tomorn.
8
Lo, the Goddess bids the maidens through her myrtle thicket go:
Handed pass they, boy and damsel; yet ye may not, must not trow
That, if still his shafts he beareth, Love is keeping holiday:—
Maidens, on! Love's holiday is this; his shafts are cast away!
Tomorn who ne'er hath loved shall love, and who hath loved shall love tomorn. ”

“ Boldly and wild his music finds its star.
Unto the human does my voice belong
And Aphrodite smiles on me from far.
Have I no charms? has genius lost her touch
To turn simplicity to beauty's zone?
Am I so small, whose towering height is such
That in the world of men I stand alone?
Yea, I am brown—an Æthiopian's face
Turned Perseus from his path, a flame of fire. ”

“ My heart by Love is thus
With the sweetest of pain beguiled.
ASPIRATION
I do not think with my two arms to touch the sky,
I do not dream to do almighty things;
So small a singing bird may never soar so high,
To beat the sapphire fire with baffled wings.
I do not think with my two arms to touch the sky,
I do not dream by any chance to share
With deathless Gods the bliss of Paphos they deny
To men behind the azure veil of air.
HERO, OF GYARA
I taught Hero, of Gyara, the swift runner ”

“ Tones that make the heart in my bosom flutter,
For if I, the space of a moment even,
Near to thee come, any word I would utter
Instantly fails me;
Vain my stricken tongue would a whisper fashion,
Subtly under my skin runs fire ecstatic;
Straightway mists surge dim to my eyes and leave them
Reft of their vision;
Echoes ring in my ears; a trembling seizes
All my body bathed in soft perspiration;
Pale as grass I grow in my passion's madness,
Like one insensate;
But must I dare all, since to me unworthy,
Bliss thy beauty brings that a God might envy ”

“ Sonnet to Dica, the fair and wise.
(Fragments 79, 69, 78 combined.)
Dica, I love all dainty grace; and more
⁠Than all I love the dainty grace of thee.
⁠Love has the splendour of the sun for me,
The beauty that the sun's rays earthward pour.
I love not thy grace only: I adore
⁠Wisdom, a thing divine; and there will be
⁠Never a maid that shall the sun's light see
Who more than thou is dowered with wisdom's lore. ”

“ But Love, half veiled by broken words and tears.
You! you! who left me without kiss or tear
Or word, to murmur softly like a child
Begotten of thy voice, deception were
Less cruel far than silence, you who smiled
Falsely so often, had you no false phrase—
You who so often had false tales to tell—
No voice there, at the parting of our ways,
To say "Farewell, O Love!" or just "Farewell"!
I had no gift to give you when you passed,
And wrongs were all the gifts received from thee,
I had no words to tell you at the last
But these: "Forgo not life, forget not me." ”

“ Draining fire and dew from the dawn for rarest
Color and odor;
Softly breathed, its scent is a plea for passion,
When it blooms to welcome the kiss of Kypris;
Sheathed in fragrant leaves its tremulous petals
Laugh in the zephyr.
ODE TO APHRODITE
Aphrodite, subtle of soul and deathless,
Daughter of God, weaver of wiles, I pray thee
Neither with care, dread Mistress, nor with anguish,
Slay thou my spirit!
But in pity hasten, come now if ever
From afar of old when my voice implored thee,
Thou hast deigned to listen, leaving the golden
House of thy father
With thy chariot yoked ”

“ The world has suffered no greater literary loss than the loss of Sappho's poems. So perfect are the smallest fragments preserved that we muse in a sad rapture of astonishment to think what the complete poems must have been. Of all the poets of the world, of all the illustrious artists of all literature, Sappho is the one whose every word has a peculiar and unmistakable perfume, a seal of absolute perfection and illimitable grace. ”

“ Darkens the daylight.
LONG AGO
Long ago beloved, thy memory, Atthis,
Saddens still my heart as the soft Æolic
Twilight deepens down on the sea, and fitful
Winds that have wandered
Over groves of myrtle at Amathonte
Waft forgotten passion on breaths of perfume.
Long ago, how madly I loved thee, Atthis!
Faithless, light-hearted
Loved one, mine no more, who lovest another
More than me; the silent flute and the faded
Garlands haunt the heart of me thou forgettest,
Long since thy lover.
EPITHALAMIA THRENODES
HYMENAIOS
Artisans, raise high the roof beam! ”

“ My blood was flame that thrilled to passion's throe;
Now long neglect has quenched the olden fire,
And blight of drifting years effaced desire.
I loved you, Atthis—joy of long ago—
Love shook my soul as winds on forests blow;
This lawless heart that dared exhaust delight,
Unsated strove and maddened through the night.
I loved you, Atthis, once, long years ago!
With pain whose surge I felt to anguish grow;
Suffered the storms that waste the heart and leave
A desert shore where seas but break to grieve. ”

“ At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after life can never bring its rapture or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! ”

“ Think not to ever look as once of yore,
Atthis, upon my love; for thou no more
Wilt find intact upon its stem the flower
Thy guile left slain and bleeding in that hour.
So ruthless shepherds crush beneath their feet
The hill flower blooming in the summer heat;
The hyacinth whose purple heart is found
Left bruised and dead, to darken on the ground.
DEATH
Death is an evil ”

“ There is not a fragment of Sappho that is not surrounded in the mind of the reader by the rainbow of suggestion. Just as the gods draped the human form to give desire imagination, so, perhaps, some god and no fate has all but hidden the mind of Sappho. ”

“ Sappho to her Girl-friends. She playfully satirizes the foibles of some of them.
(Fragments 34, 77, 76, 61, 71, 48, 86, 83, 47, 129, 32 combined.)
This is my song of maidens dear to me.
Eranna, a slight girl I counted thee,
When first I looked upon thy form and face,
Slim as a reed, and all devoid of grace.
But stately stature, grace and beauty came
Unto thee with the years—O, dost not shame
For this, Eranna, that thy pride hath grown
Therewith? Alas for thee! I have not known
One beauty ever of more scornful mien,
As though thou wert of all earth's daughters queen! ”

“ That on Mitylene's
Marble bridge we met,
Gongyla, thou golden
Maid of Colophon.
Like the breath of morning
Or a breeze from sea,
Fresh thy beauty smote me,
Virile of the north.
Startled by thy vision,
Transports half divine
Flooded veins and bosom,
Shook me with desire.
Soon the kinder sunglow
Of Æolic lands
Melted all the futile
Snows about thy heart.
DAMOPHYLA
Cold of heart and strangely
Uninclined to passion,
Wisdom's vigil leaves thee,
Proud Damophyla.
Sapphics thou hast written,
Verses in my metre,
With a skill surpassing
In the melic art. ”

“ Yearns thy soul—say whom shall my glamour chaining
Hale thy love's thrall, Sappho?—and who is wronging
⁠Thee with disdaining?
Who avoids thee soon shall be thy pursuer:
Ay, the gift-rejecter the giver shall now be:
Ay, the loveless now shall become the wooer,
⁠Scornful shalt thou be!"
Once again come! Come, and my chains dissever,
Chains of heart-ache! Passionate longings rend me—
Oh fulfil them! Thou in the strife be ever
⁠Near, to defend me! ”

“ Sappho, pursuing Love, by Grief pursued,
Sappho, beside the blue Leucadian sea
There stands a rock, and there above the caves,
Whose wandering echoes reach Apollo's fane,
Down leaping to the blue and breaking waves,
Lovers find sleep, nor dream of love again. ”

“ Swaying to the flute,
Moving with the music
Never mute;
Graceful the orchestric
Figures they unfold,
While the vesper heaven
Turns to gold.
Turns to gold.
LARICHUS
While charming maids plait garlands for thy brows,
Larichus, bring the pledge for this carouse
Like lovely Ganymede, brother mine,
And cool from thy patera pour the wine.
Thy slender limbs have all a Satyr's grace,
Hylas, the Wood-God, dimples in thy face;
These maids of mine, beloved and loving me,
My dreams have made thy Nymphs to sport with thee. ”

“ Love in our bosoms;
Thus the bowl ambrosial was stirred in Paphos
For the feast, and taking the burnished ladle,
Hermes poured the wine for the Gods who lifted
Reverent beakers;
High they held their goblets and made libation,
Spilling wine as pledge to the Fates and Hades
Quaffing deep and binding their hearts to Eros,
Lauding thy servant.
So to me and my Lesbians round me gathered,
Each made mine, an amphor of love long tasted,
Bid us drink, who sigh for thy thrill ecstatic,
Passion's full goblet ”

“ Sappho now calls thee, lyre and Lyric Muse
Forgotten, and the tears born of her wrongs
Blinding her eyes, upturned but to refuse
Phœbus, the fountain of all joyous songs.
I burn, as when in swiftness, past the byres,
Flame takes the corn, borne by the winds that blow ”