Arthur Stringer

“ Your voice, like dew, falls deep in my dry heart,
And like a bell your name swings through my dreams;
Now all my being throbs and cries for you;
Come back with me; but come, and I will speak
A thousand gentle words for each poor tear
That dimmed your eyes! Come back, and I will crown
Your days with love so enduring it shall light
The eternal stars to bed!
Sappho
Ask me no more,—
My Phaon, you must ask me nevermore:
Though Music pipe from Memory’s darkest pine
Her tenderest note, all time her wings are torn;
The assuaging founts of tears themselves have failed. ”

“ Calling through the gloom for thee!—
For the love that life has known,
For the parting yet to be!
Sappho
Now I shall go
Quite gladly, with this more than anguish at
My over-aching heart, that cries for rest:
Yes, shade-like even now I seem,—this face
Sea-worn as Leucothea’s lonely face,
So wistful white at eve amid the waves
Where with sad eyes, men say, she gazes on
Earth’s failing hills and fields! ”

“ Were full of gloom, and many waters sang,—
Still on to some low plain and highland coign
Remembered not of men, where we had made
Our home amid the music of the hills,
Letting life’s twilight sands glide thro’ the glass
So golden-slow, so glad, no plaintive chime
Could e’er be blown across autumnal eves
From Life’s gray towers of many-tongued Regret:
Then I had been most happy at your side,
Easing this aching heart with homely thoughts
And turning these sad hands to simple things. ”

“ Phaon
Madness throbs thro’ her, and I fear this mood.
Sappho
The waves are softer with their dead, and winds
More kindly are with leaves in winter than
Men’s cruel love, that kills and buries not! ”

“ Whose passion was as vain, whose heart could sound
Thro’ all the sweetest meadows of this world
Only for evermore the morning lutes
Of loneliness and most unhappy love.
For once, in times I know not of, you too
Have loved and sorrowed, as your heart would say,
Mourning at dusk among your golden Isles.
I cannot call on mine old gods, for they
Have lived so far from Earth, they scarce would know
The odour of my incense, nor how white
My piteous altars stand ”

“ The lute alone, and not the voices low
That sang of old to some forgotten touch.
The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame
Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk
Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea.
The shell I give you, Ares, not the song
Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it;
The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go. ”

“ And unto you still grown, and gone thro’ sun
And gloom beside you, holding in my arms
Hope’s hostage children, while I gladly felt
The keen captivity of love re-wake
At each light touch, and in the sweet dread bliss
Of motherhood and most mysterious birth
Forgot old wrongs, and starred the hills of grief
With primrose faith and opiate asphodel.
Phaon
Why brood on things turned ashes long ago
When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve
By opal eve, Earth whispers: Life is good? ”

“ Naked and torn we lie beneath their feet,
Who, had they known, in sorrow would have crept
Thro’ griefs entombing night with what once held
Such joys and tears for them!
(As she turns to the sea a voice in the distance is heard singing through the twilight:)
O that sound, not wind or sea,
From no bird nor dreamland blown,
Bearing you away from me,
Crying: “One must go alone!” ”

“ And men with wondering eyes shall watch the Spring
Return, and weep, indeed, these selfsame tears,
And laugh with my good laughter, knowing not
Whence came their passing bliss so torn with pain.
For good is Enna, and the wide, glad Earth,
And good the comfortable green of grass
And Nysian meadows still so milky pale;
Good seems the dark steer in the noonday sun,
The ploughman’s keel that turns black waves of loam,
The laughing girls, the fluting shepherd boys,
And beautiful the song of many birds ”

“ In that brief hour, ’tis writ, you shall hear breathe
Songs blown from some enchanted island home,
Then mourn for evermore life’s silent throats,—
Aye, seek and find the altar when its fires
Are ashes, and the worship vain regret!
A mystic law more strong than all delight
Or pain shall each delicious rapture chill,
Exacting sternly for each ecstasy ”

“ Whom Life has given unto Death and Death
Back unto Life—both ghost and goddess, lo,
Who faced these mortal tears to fathom love!
SAPPHO IN LEUCADIA
Scene.—The white-rocked promontory of Leucate, on the Island of Leucadia, overlooking the Ionian Sea. High on the cliff, in the background, towers the Leucadian Temple to Apollo, white and gold in the waning sunlight. Sappho, of Lesbos, stands on the brink of the cliff, and at her feet kneels Phaon, of Mitylene. As they gaze seaward a group of young shepherds pass from the Temple, and a voice in the distance is heard singing. ”