SAPPHO
ONE HUNDRED LYRICS BY BLISS CARMAN
1907
“SAPPHO WHO BROKE OFF A FRAGMENT OF HER SOUL FOR US TO GUESS AT.”
“SAPPHO, WITH THAT GLORIOLE OF EBON HAIR ON CALMÈD BROWS— O POET-WOMAN! NONE FORGOES THE LEAP, ATTAINING THE REPOSE.”
E.B. BROWNING.
INTRODUCTION
THE POETRY OF SAPPHO.—If all the poets and all the lovers of poetry should be asked to name the most precious of the priceless things which time has wrung in tribute from the triumphs of human genius, the answer which would rush to every tongue would be “The Lost Poems of Sappho.” These we know to have been jewels of a radiance so imperishable that the broken gleams of them still dazzle men’s eyes, whether shining from the two small brilliants and the handful of star-dust which alone remain to us, or reflected merely from the adoration of those poets of old time who were so fortunate as to witness their full glory.
For about two thousand five hundred years Sappho has held her place as not only the supreme poet of her sex, but the chief lyrist of all lyrists. Every one who reads acknowledges her fame, concedes her supremacy; but to all except poets and Hellenists her name is a vague and uncomprehended splendour, rising secure above a persistent mist of misconception. In spite of all that is in these days being written about Sappho, it is perhaps not out of place now to inquire, in a few words, into the substance of this supremacy which towers so unassailably secure from what appear to be such shadowy foundations.
First, we have the witness of her contemporaries. Sappho was at the height of her career about six centuries before Christ, at a period when lyric poetry was peculiarly esteemed and cultivated at the centres of Greek life. Among the Molic peoples of the Isles, in particular, it had been carried to a high pitch of perfection, and its forms had become the subject of assiduous study. Its technique was exact, complex, extremely elaborate, minutely regulated; yet the essential fires of sincerity, spontaneity, imagination and passion were flaming with undiminished heat behind the fixed forms and restricted measures. The very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymned by Alcæus, and acclaimed by her fellowcraftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. That all the tributes of her contemporaries show reverence not less for her personality than for her genius is sufficient answer to the calumnies with which the ribald jesters of that later period, the corrupt and shameless writers of Athenian comedy, strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrant our regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vain pursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis—who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions. The story is further discredited by the fact that we find no mention of it in Greek literature—even among those Attic comedians who would have clutched at it so eagerly and given it so gross a turn—till a date more than two hundred years after Sappho’s death. It is a myth which has begotten some exquisite literature, both in prose and verse, from Ovid’s famous epistle to Addison’s gracious fantasy and some impassioned and imperishable dithyrambs of Mr. Swinburne; but one need not accept the story as a fact in order to appreciate the beauties which flowered out from its coloured unreality.
The applause of contemporaries, however, is not always justified by the verdict of after-times, and does not always secure an immortality of renown. The fame of Sappho has a more stable basis. Her work was in the world’s possession for not far short of a thousand years—a thousand years of changing tastes, searching criticism, and familiar use. It had to endure the wear and tear of quotation, the commonizing touch of the school and the market-place. And under this test its glory grew ever more and more conspicuous. Through those thousand years poets and critics vied with one another in proclaiming her verse the one unmatched exemplar of lyric art. Such testimony, even though not a single fragment remained to us from which to judge her poetry for ourselves, might well convince us that the supremacy acknowledged by those who knew all the triumphs of the genius of old Greece was beyond the assault of any modern rival. We might safely accept the sustained judgment of a thousand years of Greece.
Fortunately for us, however, two small but incomparable odes and a few scintillating fragments have survived, quoted and handed down in the eulogies of critics and expositors. In these the wisest minds, the greatest poets, and the most inspired teachers of modern days have found justification for the unanimous verdict of antiquity. The tributes of Addison, Tennyson, and others, the throbbing paraphrases and ecstatic interpretations of Swinburne, are too well known to call for special comment in this brief note; but the concise summing up of her genius by Mr. Watts-Dunton in his remarkable essay on poetry is so convincing and illuminating that it seems to demand quotation here: “Never before these songs were sung, and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers; and, from the executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high, imperious verbal economy which only nature can teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the place of second.”
The poems of Sappho so mysteriously lost to us seem to have consisted of at least nine books of odes, together with epithalamia, epigrams, elegies, and monodies. Of the several theories which have been advanced to account for their disappearance, the most plausible seems to be that which represents them as having been burned at Byzantium in the year 380 Anno Domini, by command of Gregory Nazianzen, in order that his own poems might be studied in their stead and the morals of the people thereby improved. Of the efficacy of this act no means of judging has come down to us.
In recent years there has arisen a great body of literature upon the subject of Sappho, most of it the abstruse work of scholars writing for scholars. But the gist of it all, together with the minutest surviving fragment of her verse, has been made available to the general reader in English by Mr. Henry T. Wharton, in whose altogether admirable little volume we find all that is known and the most apposite of all that has been said up to the present day about
“Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,
Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.”
Perhaps the most perilous and the most alluring venture in the whole field of poetry is that which Mr. Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us in English verse those lost poems of Sappho of which fragments have survived. The task is obviously not one of translation or of paraphrasing, but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction. It is as if a sculptor of to-day were to set himself, with reverence, and trained craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of Polyclitus or Praxiteles of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon which to build. Mr. Carman’s method, apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavour of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely original work.
C.G.D. ROBERTS.
Now to please my little friend
I must make these notes of spring,
With the soft south-west wind in them
And the marsh notes of the frogs.
I must take a gold-bound pipe,
And outmatch the bubbling call
From the beechwoods in the sunlight,
From the meadows in the rain.
CONTENTS
Now to please my little friend
I Cyprus, Paphos, or Panormus
II What shall we do, Cytherea?
III Power and beauty and knowledge
IV O Pan of the evergreen forest
V O Aphrodite
VI Peer of the gods he seems
VII The Cyprian came to thy cradle
VIII Aphrodite of the foam
IX Nay, but always and forever
X Let there be garlands, Dica
XI When the Cretan maidens
XII In a dream I spoke with the Cyprus-born
XIII Sleep thou in the bosom
XIV Hesperus, bringing together
XV In the grey olive-grove a small brown bird
XVI In the apple boughs the coolness
XVII Pale rose leaves have fallen
XVIII The courtyard of her house is wide
XIX There is a medlar-tree
XX I behold Arcturus going westward
XXI Softly the first step of twilight
XXII Once you lay upon my bosom
XXIII I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago
XXIV I shall be ever maiden
XXV It was summer when I found you
XXVI I recall thy white gown, cinctured
XXVII Lover, art thou of a surety
XXVIII With your head thrown backward
XXIX Ah, what am I but a torrent
XXX Love shakes my soul, like a mountain wind
XXXI Love, let the wind cry
XXXII Heart of mine, if all the altars
XXXIII Never yet, love, in earth’s lifetime
XXXIV “Who was Atthis?” men shall ask
XXXV When the great pink mallow
XXXVI When I pass thy door at night
XXXVII Well I found you in the twilit garden
XXXVIII Will not men remember us
XXXIX I grow weary of the foreign cities
XL Ah, what detains thee, Phaon
XLI Phaon, O my lover
XLII O heart of insatiable longing
XLIII Surely somehow, in some measure
XLIV O but my delicate lover
XLV Softer than the hill-fog to the forest
XLVI I seek and desire
XLVII Like torn sea-kelp in the drift
XLVIII Fine woven purple linen
XLIX When I am home from travel
L When I behold the pharos shine
LI Is the day long
LII Lo, on the distance a dark blue ravine
LIII Art thou the top-most apple
LIV How soon will all my lovely days be over
LV Soul of sorrow, why this weeping?
LVI It never can be mine
LVII Others shall behold the sun
LVIII Let thy strong spirit never fear
LIX Will none say of Sappho
LX When I have departed
LXI There is no more to say, now thou art still
LXII Play up, play up thy silver flute
LXIII A beautiful child is mine
LXIV Ah, but now henceforth
LXV Softly the wind moves through the radiant morning
LXVI What the west wind whispers
LXVII Indoors the fire is kindled
LXVIII You ask how love can keep the mortal soul
LXIX Like a tall forest were their spears
LXX My lover smiled, “O friend, ask not
LXXI Ye who have the stable world
LXXII I heard the gods reply
LXXIII The sun on the tide, the peach on the bough
LXXIV If death be good
LXXV Tell me what this life means
LXXVI Ye have heard how Marsyas
LXXVII Hour by hour I sit
LXXVIII Once in the shining street
LXXIX How strange is love, O my lover
LXXX How to say I love you
LXXXI Hark, love, to the tambourines
LXXXII Over the roofs the honey-coloured moon
LXXXIII In the quiet garden world
LXXXIV Soft was the wind in the beech-trees
LXXXV Have ye heard the news of Sappho’s garden
LXXXVI Love is so strong a thing
LXXXVII Hadst thou with all thy loveliness been true
LXXXVIII As on a morn a traveller might emerge
LXXXIX Where shall I look for thee
XC O sad, sad face and saddest eyes that ever
XCI Why have the gods in derision
XCII Like a red lily in the meadow grasses
XCIII When in the spring the swallows all return
XCIV Cold is the wind where Daphne sleeps
XCV Hark, where Poseidon’s
XCVI Hark, my lover, it is spring!
XCVII When the early soft spring wind comes blowing
XCVIII I am more tremulous than shaken reeds
XCIX Over the wheat field
C Once more the rain on the mountain
Epilogue
SAPPHO
I
Cyprus, Paphos, or Panormus
May detain thee with their splendour
Of oblations on thine altars,
O imperial Aphrodite.
Yet do thou regard, with pity 5
For a nameless child of passion,
This small unfrequented valley
By the sea, O sea-born mother.
II
What shall we do, Cytherea?
Lovely Adonis is dying.
Ah, but we mourn him!
Will he return when the Autumn
Purples the earth, and the sunlight 5
Sleeps in the vineyard?
Will he return when the Winter
Huddles the sheep, and Orion
Goes to his hunting?
Ah, but thy beauty, Adonis, 10
With the soft spring and the south wind,
Love and desire!
III
Power and beauty and knowledge,—
Pan, Aphrodite, or Hermes,—
Whom shall we life-loving mortals
Serve and be happy?
Lo now, your garlanded altars, 5
Are they not goodly with flowers?
Have ye not honour and pleasure
In lovely Lesbos?
Will ye not, therefore, a little
Hearten, impel, and inspire 10
One who adores, with a favour
Threefold in wonder?
IV
O Pan of the evergreen forest,
Protector of herds in the meadows,
Helper of men at their toiling,—
Tillage and harvest and herding,—
How many times to frail mortals 5
Hast thou not hearkened!
Now even I come before thee
With oil and honey and wheat-bread,
Praying for strength and fulfilment
Of human longing, with purpose 10
Ever to keep thy great worship
Pure and undarkened.
* * * * *
O Hermes, master of knowledge,
Measure and number and rhythm,
Worker of wonders in metal, 15
Moulder of malleable music,
So often the giver of secret
Learning to mortals!
Now even I, a fond woman,
Frail and of small understanding, 20
Yet with unslakable yearning
Greatly desiring wisdom,
Come to the threshold of reason
And the bright portals.
* * * * *
And thou, sea-born Aphrodite, 25
In whose beneficent keeping
Earth, with her infinite beauty,
Colour and fashion and fragrance,
Glows like a flower with fervour
Where woods are vernal! 30
Touch with thy lips and enkindle
This moon-white delicate body,
Drench with the dew of enchantment
This mortal one, that I also
Grow to the measure of beauty 35
Fleet yet eternal.
V
O Aphrodite,
God-born and deathless,
Break not my spirit
With bitter anguish:
Thou wilful empress, 5
I pray thee, hither!
As once aforetime
Well thou didst hearken
To my voice far off,—
Listen, and leaving 10
Thy father’s golden
House in yoked chariot,
Come, thy fleet sparrows
Beating the mid-air
Over the dark earth. 15
Suddenly near me,
Smiling, immortal,
Thy bright regard asked
What had befallen,—
Why I had called thee,— 20
What my mad heart then
Most was desiring.
“What fair thing wouldst thou
Lure now to love thee?
“Who wrongs thee, Sappho? 25
If now she flies thee,
Soon shall she follow;—
Scorning thy gifts now,
Soon be the giver;—
And a loth loved one 30
“Soon be the lover.”
So even now, too,
Come and release me
From mordant love pain,
And all my heart’s will 35
Help me accomplish!
VI
Peer of the gods he seems,
Who in thy presence
Sits and hears close to him
Thy silver speech-tones
And lovely laughter. 5
Ah, but the heart flutters
Under my bosom,
When I behold thee
Even a moment;
Utterance leaves me; 10
My tongue is useless;
A subtle fire
Runs through my body;
My eyes are sightless,
And my ears ringing; 15
I flush with fever,
And a strong trembling
Lays hold upon me;
Paler than grass am I,
Half dead for madness. 20
Yet must I, greatly
Daring, adore thee,
As the adventurous
Sailor makes seaward
For the lost sky-line 25
And undiscovered
Fabulous islands,
Drawn by the lure of
Beauty and summer
And the sea’s secret. 30
VII
The Cyprian came to thy cradle,
When thou wast little and small,
And said to the nurse who rocked thee
“Fear not thou for the child:
“She shall be kindly favoured, 5
And fair and fashioned well,
As befits the Lesbian maidens
And those who are fated to love.”
Hermes came to thy cradle,
Resourceful, sagacious, serene, 10
And said, “The girl must have knowledge,
To lend her freedom and poise.
Naught will avail her beauty,
If she have not wit beside.
She shall be Hermes’ daughter, 15
Passing wise in her day.”
Great Pan came to thy cradle,
With calm of the deepest hills,
And smiled, “They have forgotten
The veriest power of life. 20
“To kindle her shapely beauty,
And illumine her mind withal,
I give to the little person
The glowing and craving soul.”
VIII
Aphrodite of the foam,
Who hast given all good gifts,
And made Sappho at thy will
Love so greatly and so much,
Ah, how comes it my frail heart 5
Is so fond of all things fair,
I can never choose between
Gorgo and Andromeda?
IX
Nay, but always and forever
Like the bending yellow grain,
Or quick water in a channel,
Is the heart of man.
Comes the unseen breath in power 5
Like a great wind from the sea,
And we bow before his coming,
Though we know not why.
X
Let there be garlands, Dica,
Around thy lovely hair.
And supple sprays of blossom
Twined by thy soft hands.
Whoso is crowned with flowers 5
Has favour with the gods,
Who have no kindly eyes
For the ungarlanded.
XI
When the Cretan maidens
Dancing up the full moon
Round some fair new altar,
Trample the soft blossoms of fine grass,
There is mirth among them. 5
Aphrodite’s children
Ask her benediction
On their bridals in the summer night.
XII
In a dream I spoke with the Cyprus-born,
And said to her,
“Mother of beauty, mother of joy,
Why hast thou given to men
“This thing called love, like the ache of a wound 5
In beauty’s side,
To burn and throb and be quelled for an hour
And never wholly depart?”
And the daughter of Cyprus said to me,
“Child of the earth, 10
Behold, all things are born and attain,
But only as they desire,—
“The sun that is strong, the gods that are wise,
The loving heart,
Deeds and knowledge and beauty and joy,— 15
But before all else was desire.”
XIII
Sleep thou in the bosom
Of the tender comrade,
While the living water
Whispers in the well-run,
And the oleanders 5
Glimmer in the moonlight.
Soon, ah, soon the shy birds
Will be at their fluting,
And the morning planet
Rise above the garden; 10
For there is a measure
Set to all things mortal.
XIV
Hesperus, bringing together
All that the morning star scattered,—
Sheep to be folded in twilight,
Children for mothers to fondle,—
Me too will bring to the dearest, 5
Tenderest breast in all Lesbos.
XV
In the grey olive-grove a small brown bird
Had built her nest and waited for the spring.
But who could tell the happy thought that came
To lodge beneath my scarlet tunic’s fold?
All day long now is the green earth renewed 5
With the bright sea-wind and the yellow blossoms.
From the cool shade I hear the silver plash
Of the blown fountain at the garden’s end.
XVI
In the apple boughs the coolness
Murmurs, and the grey leaves flicker
Where sleep wanders.
In this garden all the hot noon
I await thy fluttering footfall 5
Through the twilight.
XVII
Pale rose leaves have fallen
In the fountain water;
And soft reedy flute-notes
Pierce the sultry quiet.
But I wait and listen, 5
Till the trodden gravel
Tells me, all impatience,
It is Phaon’s footstep.
XVIII
The courtyard of her house is wide
And cool and still when day departs.
Only the rustle of leaves is there
And running water.
And then her mouth, more delicate 5
Than the frail wood-anemone,
Brushes my cheek, and deeper grow
The purple shadows.
XIX
There is a medlar-tree
Growing in front of my lover’s house,
And there all day
The wind makes a pleasant sound.
And when the evening comes, 5
We sit there together in the dusk,
And watch the stars
Appear in the quiet blue.
XX
I behold Arcturus going westward
Down the crowded slope of night-dark azure,
While the Scorpion with red Antares
Trails along the sea-line to the southward.
From the ilex grove there comes soft laughter,— 5
My companions at their glad love-making,—
While that curly-headed boy from Naxos
With his jade flute marks the purple quiet.
XXI
Softly the first step of twilight
Falls on the darkening dial,
One by one kindle the lights
In Mitylene.
Noises are hushed in the courtyard, 5
The busy day is departing,
Children are called from their games,—
Herds from their grazing.
And from the deep-shadowed angles
Comes the soft murmur of lovers, 10
Then through the quiet of dusk
Bright sudden laughter.
From the hushed street, through the portal,
Where soon my lover will enter,
Comes the pure strain of a flute 15
Tender with passion.
XXII
Once you lay upon my bosom,
While the long blue-silver moonlight
Walked the plain, with that pure passion
All your own.
Now the moon is gone, the Pleiads 5
Gone, the dead of night is going;
Slips the hour, and on my bed
I lie alone.
XXIII
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
And we would often at the fall of dusk
Wander together by the silver stream, 5
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew,
And purple-misted in the fading light.
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,
And the superb magnificence of love,—
The loneliness that saddens solitude, 10
And the sweet speech that makes it durable,—
The bitter longing and the keen desire,
The sweet companionship through quiet days
In the slow ample beauty of the world,
And the unutterable glad release 15
Within the temple of the holy night.
O Atthis, how I loved thee long ago
In that fair perished summer by the sea!
XXIV
I shall be ever maiden,
If thou be not my lover,
And no man shall possess me
Henceforth and forever.
But thou alone shalt gather 5
This fragile flower of beauty,—
To crush and keep the fragrance
Like a holy incense.
Thou only shalt remember
This love of mine, or hallow 10
The coming years with gladness,
Calm and pride and passion.
XXV
It was summer when I found you
In the meadow long ago,—
And the golden vetch was growing
By the shore.
Did we falter when love took us 5
With a gust of great desire?
Does the barley bid the wind wait
In his course?
XXVI
I recall thy white gown, cinctured
With a linen belt, whereon
Violets were wrought, and scented
With strange perfumes out of Egypt.
And I know thy foot was covered 5
With fair Lydian broidered straps;
And the petals from a rose-tree
Fell within the marble basin.
XXVII
Lover, art thou of a surety
Not a learner of the wood-god?
Has the madness of his music
Never touched thee?
Ah, thou dear and godlike mortal, 5
If Pan takes thee for his pupil,
Make me but another Syrinx
For that piping.
XXVIII
With your head thrown backward
In my arm’s safe hollow,
And your face all rosy
With the mounting fervour;
While the grave eyes greaten 5
With the wise new wonder,
Swimming in a love-mist
Like the haze of Autumn;
From that throat, the throbbing
Nightingale’s for pleading, 10
Wayward, soft, and welling
Inarticulate love-notes,
Come the words that bubble
Up through broken laughter,
Sweeter than spring-water, 15
“Gods, I am so happy!”
XXIX
Ah, what am I but a torrent,
Headstrong, impetuous, broken,
Like the spent clamour of waters
In the blue canyon?
Ah, what art thou but a fern-frond, 5
Wet with blown spray from the river,
Diffident, lovely, sequestered,
Frail on the rock-ledge?
Yet, are we not for one brief day,
While the sun sleeps on the mountain, 10
Wild-hearted lover and loved one,
Safe in Pan’s keeping?
XXX
Love shakes my soul, like a mountain wind
Falling upon the trees,
When they are swayed and whitened and bowed
As the great gusts will.
I know why Daphne sped through the grove 5
When the bright god came by,
And shut herself in the laurel’s heart
For her silent doom.
Love fills my heart, like my lover’s breath
Filling the hollow flute, 10
Till the magic wood awakes and cries
With remembrance and joy.
Ah, timid Syrinx, do I not know
Thy tremor of sweet fear?
For a beautiful and imperious player 15
Is the lord of life.
XXXI
Love, let the wind cry
On the dark mountain,
Bending the ash-trees
And the tall hemlocks,
With the great voice of 5
Thunderous legions,
How I adore thee.
Let the hoarse torrent
In the blue canyon,
Murmuring mightily 10
Out of the grey mist
Of primal chaos,
Cease not proclaiming
How I adore thee.
Let the long rhythm 15
Of crunching rollers,
Breaking and bellowing
On the white seaboard,
Titan and tireless,
Tell, while the world stands, 20
How I adore thee.
Love, let the clear call
Of the tree-cricket,
Frailest of creatures,
Green as the young grass, 25
Mark with his trilling
Resonant bell-note,
How I adore thee.
Let the glad lark-song
Over the meadow, 30
That melting lyric
Of molten silver,
Be for a signal
To listening mortals,
How I adore thee. 35
But more than all sounds,
Surer, serener,
Fuller with passion
And exultation,
Let the hushed whisper 40
In thine own heart say,
How I adore thee.
XXXII
Heart of mine, if all the altars
Of the ages stood before me,
Not one pure enough nor sacred
Could I find to lay this white, white
Rose of love upon. 5
I who am not great enough to
Love thee with this mortal body
So impassionate with ardour,
But oh, not too small to worship
While the sun shall shine,— 10
I would build a fragrant temple
To thee, in the dark green forest,
Of red cedar and fine sandal,
And there love thee with sweet service
All my whole life long. 15
I would freshen it with flowers,
And the piney hill-wind through it
Should be sweetened with soft fervours
Of small prayers in gentle language
Thou wouldst smile to hear. 20
And a tinkling Eastern wind-bell,
With its fluttering inscription,
From the rafters with bronze music
Should retard the quiet fleeting
Of uncounted hours. 25
And my hero, while so human,
Should be even as the gods are,
In that shrine of utter gladness,
With the tranquil stars above it
And the sea below. 30
XXXIII
Never yet, love, in earth’s lifetime,
Hath any cunningest minstrel
Told the one seventh of wisdom,
Ravishment, ecstasy, transport,
Hid in the hue of the hyacinth’s 5
Purple in springtime.
Not in the lyre of Orpheus,
Not in the songs of Musæus,
Lurked the unfathomed bewitchment
Wrought by the wind in the grasses, 10
Held by the rote of the sea-surf,
In early summer.
Only to exquisite lovers,
Fashioned for beauty’s fulfilment,
Mated as rhythm to reed-stop 15
Whence the wild music is moulded,
Ever appears the full measure
Of the world’s wonder.
XXXIV
“Who was Atthis?” men shall ask,
When the world is old, and time
Has accomplished without haste
The strange destiny of men.
Haply in that far-off age 5
One shall find these silver songs,
With their human freight, and guess
What a lover Sappho was.
XXXV
When the great pink mallow
Blossoms in the marshland,
Full of lazy summer
And soft hours,
Then I hear the summons 5
Not a mortal lover
Ever yet resisted,
Strange and far.
In the faint blue foothills,
Making magic music, 10
Pan is at his love-work
On the reeds.
I can guess the heart-stop,
Fall and lull and sequence,
Full of grief for Syrinx 15
Long ago.
Then the crowding madness,
Wild and keen and tender,
Trembles with the burden
Of great joy. 20
Nay, but well I follow,
All unskilled, that fluting.
Never yet was reed-nymph
Like to thee.
XXXVI
When I pass thy door at night
I a benediction breathe:
“Ye who have the sleeping world
In your care,
“Guard the linen sweet and cool, 5
Where a lovely golden head
With its dreams of mortal bliss
Slumbers now!”
XXXVII
Well I found you in the twilit garden,
Laid a lover’s hand upon your shoulder,
And we both were made aware of loving
Past the reach of reason to unravel,
Or the much desiring heart to follow. 5
There we heard the breath among the grasses
And the gurgle of soft-running water,
Well contented with the spacious starlight,
The cool wind’s touch and the deep blue distance,
Till the dawn came in with golden sandals. 10
XXXVIII
Will not men remember us
In the days to come hereafter,—
Thy warm-coloured loving beauty
And my love for thee?
Thou, the hyacinth that grows 5
By a quiet-running river;
I, the watery reflection
And the broken gleam.
XXXIX
I grow weary of the foreign cities,
The sea travel and the stranger peoples.
Even the clear voice of hardy fortune
Dares me not as once on brave adventure.
For the heart of man must seek and wander, 5
Ask and question and discover knowledge;
Yet above all goodly things is wisdom,
And love greater than all understanding.
So, a mariner, I long for land-fall,—
When a darker purple on the sea-rim, 10
O’er the prow uplifted, shall be Lesbos
And the gleaming towers of Mitylene.
XL
Ah, what detains thee, Phaon,
So long from Mitylene,
Where now thy restless lover
Wearies for thy coming?
A fever burns me, Phaon; 5
My knees quake on the threshold,
And all my strength is loosened,
Slack with disappointment.
But thou wilt come, my Phaon,
Back from the sea like morning, 10
To quench in golden gladness
The ache of parted lovers.
XLI
Phaon, O my lover,
What should so detain thee,
Now the wind comes walking
Through the leafy twilight?
All the plum-leaves quiver 5
With the coolth and darkness,
After their long patience
In consuming ardour.
And the moving grasses
Have relief; the dew-drench 10
Comes to quell the parching
Ache of noon they suffered.
I alone of all things
Fret with unsluiced fire.
And there is no quenching 15
In the night for Sappho,
Since her lover Phaon
Leaves her unrequited.