All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of ironStood and beheld me....Saw the reluctantFeet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,Looking always, looking with necks reverted,Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunderShone Mitylene;...Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;Fear was upon them,While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,None endured the sound of her song for weeping;Laurel by laurel.Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,Round her woven tresses and ashen templesWhite as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,Ravaged with kisses,Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.Yea, almost the implacable AphroditePaused, and almost wept; such a song was that song,Yea, by her name tooCalled her, saying, ‘Turn to me, O my Sappho;’Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw notTears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,Heard not about her...Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singingSongs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,Hearing, to hear them.
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of ironStood and beheld me....Saw the reluctantFeet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,Looking always, looking with necks reverted,Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunderShone Mitylene;...Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;Fear was upon them,While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,None endured the sound of her song for weeping;Laurel by laurel.Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,Round her woven tresses and ashen templesWhite as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,Ravaged with kisses,Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.Yea, almost the implacable AphroditePaused, and almost wept; such a song was that song,Yea, by her name tooCalled her, saying, ‘Turn to me, O my Sappho;’Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw notTears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,Heard not about her...Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singingSongs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,Hearing, to hear them.
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of ironStood and beheld me.
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
Stood and beheld me.
...
...
Saw the reluctantFeet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,Looking always, looking with necks reverted,Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunderShone Mitylene;
Saw the reluctant
Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
Shone Mitylene;
...
...
Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;Fear was upon them,
Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!
All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,
Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
Fear was upon them,
While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,None endured the sound of her song for weeping;Laurel by laurel.
While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.
Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,
None endured the sound of her song for weeping;
Laurel by laurel.
Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,Round her woven tresses and ashen templesWhite as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,Ravaged with kisses,
Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,
Round her woven tresses and ashen temples
White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,
Ravaged with kisses,
Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.Yea, almost the implacable AphroditePaused, and almost wept; such a song was that song,Yea, by her name too
Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.
Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite
Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song,
Yea, by her name too
Called her, saying, ‘Turn to me, O my Sappho;’Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw notTears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,Heard not about her
Called her, saying, ‘Turn to me, O my Sappho;’
Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not
Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,
Heard not about her
...
...
Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singingSongs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,Hearing, to hear them.
Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing
Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
Hearing, to hear them.
American.In America in early days little attention was paid to the content of Sappho, but the Phaon story is sometimes used, as for example by Philip Freneau of New Jersey, the “poet of the American Revolution,” the “creature of the opposition” (1752-1832). InThe Monument of Phaon, a poem published in 1795, in the form of a dialogue between Sappho and the traveller, Ismenius informs her that he saw the tomb of her deserter, Phaon, in Sicily, erected by another lady:
Not distant far a monument aroseAmong the trees, and form’d of Parian stone,...A sculptured Venus on the summit wept,A pensive Cupid dropt the parting tear.
Not distant far a monument aroseAmong the trees, and form’d of Parian stone,...A sculptured Venus on the summit wept,A pensive Cupid dropt the parting tear.
Not distant far a monument arose
Among the trees, and form’d of Parian stone,
...
A sculptured Venus on the summit wept,
A pensive Cupid dropt the parting tear.
The last lines are:
I’ll go! and from the high Leucadian steepTake my last farewell in the lover’s leap,I charge thee Phaon, by this deed of woe,To meet me in the Elysian shades below,No rival beauty shall pretend a share,Sappho alone shall walk with Phaon there.She spoke, and downward from the mountain’s heightPlung’d in the plashy wave to everlasting night.
I’ll go! and from the high Leucadian steepTake my last farewell in the lover’s leap,I charge thee Phaon, by this deed of woe,To meet me in the Elysian shades below,No rival beauty shall pretend a share,Sappho alone shall walk with Phaon there.She spoke, and downward from the mountain’s heightPlung’d in the plashy wave to everlasting night.
I’ll go! and from the high Leucadian steep
Take my last farewell in the lover’s leap,
I charge thee Phaon, by this deed of woe,
To meet me in the Elysian shades below,
No rival beauty shall pretend a share,
Sappho alone shall walk with Phaon there.
She spoke, and downward from the mountain’s height
Plung’d in the plashy wave to everlasting night.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in the index to the first volume of theSouthern Literary Messengerstates that a stanza of Sappho’s second ode is embodied in his poem,To Sarah:
In such an hour when are forgotThe World, its cares and my own lotThou seemest then to beA gentle guarding spirit givenTo guide my wandering thoughts to heavenIf they should stray from thee.
In such an hour when are forgotThe World, its cares and my own lotThou seemest then to beA gentle guarding spirit givenTo guide my wandering thoughts to heavenIf they should stray from thee.
In such an hour when are forgot
The World, its cares and my own lot
Thou seemest then to be
A gentle guarding spirit given
To guide my wandering thoughts to heaven
If they should stray from thee.
InUlalumethere is a possible echo of fragment (E. 16):
In terror she spoke, letting sink herWings till they trailed in the dust,In agony sobbed, letting sink herPlumes till they trailed in the dust.
In terror she spoke, letting sink herWings till they trailed in the dust,In agony sobbed, letting sink herPlumes till they trailed in the dust.
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust,
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust.
InAl Aaraaf, I, 43 ff., Poe says in a note that he is referring to Sappho in the lines:
... lilies such as rear’d the headOn the fair Capo Deucato, and sprangSo eagerly around about to hangUpon the flying footsteps—deep pride—Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
... lilies such as rear’d the headOn the fair Capo Deucato, and sprangSo eagerly around about to hangUpon the flying footsteps—deep pride—Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
... lilies such as rear’d the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps—deep pride—
Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
Dr. Thomas O. Mabbott of Columbia University has called my attention to the fact that Poepublished a version of Sappho’s second ode by Mary E. Hewitt inBroadway Journal, I, no. 24 (1845); that he knew “Udoch’s” note (Southern Literary Messenger, I, p. 454, April, 1835) where there is a reference to theSpectator, no. 229; and that the paper,Some Ancient Greek Authors, signed P. in theSouthern Literary Messengerfor April, 1836, where a conventional account of Sappho is given, was probably written by Poe.
Later American literature, like that of other countries, is full of the name of Sappho, even if it does not show a profound knowledge of the fragments of the actual Sappho. In any case, such dramas and poems and novels reveal the tremendous potentiality of her name. We have referred to translations or adaptations by Easby-Smith, Lucy Milburn, J. M. O’Hara, Bliss Carman, Petersen, Storer, and Marion Mills Miller. There have been renderings of individual poems by Felton, Higginson, Gildersleeve, Shorey, Lawton, Appleton, Whicher, Horton, Drake, and others; the first ode has been well rendered in the metre of the original by Professor Appleton, Professor Fairclough, and others (cf.pp. 47-52 above).73We cannot list here all the American renderings of single songs or fragments, although we have incidentally in thisbook mentioned many such, and an abundance of references will be found in the notes. Nor can we give the titles of all the tragedies and poems which have been inspired by the name of Sappho. We select only a few of the more important. There is an interesting tragedy in five acts calledSappho of Lesbosby Mrs. Estelle Lewis (“Stella”), whom Edgar Allan Poe called “the rival of Sappho.” The play was put on the stage in London in 1868 and afterwards was given on the Athenian stage in a modern Greek version. It reached a seventh edition. It should be credited to America, since Mrs. Lewis was Miss Anna Blanche Robinson, born near Baltimore in 1824. She translated Virgil’sAeneidwhen a mere schoolgirl, and afterwards married Mr. Lewis of Brooklyn, New York. She travelled much abroad, but returned to America, where she wrote some of the plays before she went to live in London in 1865. In 1876 was published Ellen Frothingham’s translation of Grillparzer’sSappho. In 1900-1913 H. V. Sutherland wrote hisSappho and Phaon, and in 1907 was published Percy Mackaye’s tragedy with the same title. Even when he was a student at Harvard, he wrote an entirely distinct lyric drama inverse, entitledSappho, or Archilochus and Hipponax, in which he himself acted with a gathering of Harvard and Wellesley students in January, 1896. Unfortunately this drama has not been published. The published play is written mostly in iambic pentameter blank verse, with a few lyrics and some trochaic and dactylic lines; there are also several excellent Sapphics. It has never been very successful on the stage, although the music given with it is still so popular that it has been recently published by Professor Stanley (cf. bibliography). In the prologue a manuscript of Sappho’s poems is imagined to have been found in excavating the theatre of Varius at Herculaneum, just as Lucy Milburn, who lived in Lesbos for a while, pretended that she procured her poems from papyri which she had discovered in a metal case in the Orient. The scene of the tragedy is an olive grove on a promontory overlooking the Aegean Sea. In the first act we have Atthis betrothed to Larichus, and Anactoria deserted by Alcaeus for Sappho. Pittacus is one of Sappho’s suitors who quarrels with Alcaeus and in trying to strike him hits the slave Phaon. In the second act Sappho releases Phaon from his yoke and they flee fromAlcaeus after Phaon has struck him with his spear. In the third act Phaon again strikes at Alcaeus, but this time hits his own boy. Thalassa, his wife, shows him his own dead child and so he returns to her, and the rejected Sappho springs into the misty sea. There are inappropriate prose interludes with a pantomime of the drunken Hercules. Sappho is here again not the real Sappho but the Sappho of tradition, which is rather strange, as several of Sappho’s fragments, by no means all that might have been suitable, are accurately and charmingly paraphrased. This shows that Mackaye knew the fragments of Sappho, but he has no real understanding of Sappho herself, for his Sappho is given to unrestrained love and she rejects a great poet and statesman for the married slave into whom Mackaye has transformed Phaon. I can quote only the very dramatic hymn to Poseidon and Aphrodite:
God of the generations, pain, and death,I bow to thee. Not for love’s sake is love’sFierce happiness, but for the after-race.Yet, thou eternal Watcher of the tides,Knowing their passions, tell me! Why must weRapturous beings of the spray and stormThat, chanting, beat our hearts against thy shoresOf aspiration—ebb? ebb and returnInto the songless deep? are we no moreThan foam upon thy garment?Another wave has broken at your feetAnd, moaning, wanes into oblivion.But not its radiance. That flashes backInto the morning, and shall flame againOver a myriad waves. That flame am I,Nor thou, Poseidon, shalt extinguish me.My spirit is thy changeling, and returnsTo her, who glows beyond the stars of birth—To her, who is herself time’s passion star.
God of the generations, pain, and death,I bow to thee. Not for love’s sake is love’sFierce happiness, but for the after-race.Yet, thou eternal Watcher of the tides,Knowing their passions, tell me! Why must weRapturous beings of the spray and stormThat, chanting, beat our hearts against thy shoresOf aspiration—ebb? ebb and returnInto the songless deep? are we no moreThan foam upon thy garment?Another wave has broken at your feetAnd, moaning, wanes into oblivion.But not its radiance. That flashes backInto the morning, and shall flame againOver a myriad waves. That flame am I,Nor thou, Poseidon, shalt extinguish me.My spirit is thy changeling, and returnsTo her, who glows beyond the stars of birth—To her, who is herself time’s passion star.
God of the generations, pain, and death,I bow to thee. Not for love’s sake is love’sFierce happiness, but for the after-race.Yet, thou eternal Watcher of the tides,Knowing their passions, tell me! Why must weRapturous beings of the spray and stormThat, chanting, beat our hearts against thy shoresOf aspiration—ebb? ebb and returnInto the songless deep? are we no moreThan foam upon thy garment?
God of the generations, pain, and death,
I bow to thee. Not for love’s sake is love’s
Fierce happiness, but for the after-race.
Yet, thou eternal Watcher of the tides,
Knowing their passions, tell me! Why must we
Rapturous beings of the spray and storm
That, chanting, beat our hearts against thy shores
Of aspiration—ebb? ebb and return
Into the songless deep? are we no more
Than foam upon thy garment?
Another wave has broken at your feetAnd, moaning, wanes into oblivion.But not its radiance. That flashes backInto the morning, and shall flame againOver a myriad waves. That flame am I,Nor thou, Poseidon, shalt extinguish me.My spirit is thy changeling, and returnsTo her, who glows beyond the stars of birth—To her, who is herself time’s passion star.
Another wave has broken at your feet
And, moaning, wanes into oblivion.
But not its radiance. That flashes back
Into the morning, and shall flame again
Over a myriad waves. That flame am I,
Nor thou, Poseidon, shalt extinguish me.
My spirit is thy changeling, and returns
To her, who glows beyond the stars of birth—
To her, who is herself time’s passion star.
Many individual American poems have also taken the title or themes from Sappho. Oliver Wendell Holmes refers to her in the fourth stanza ofThe Voiceless:
Not where Leucadian breezes sweepO’er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow,But where the glistening night-dews weepOn nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow.(The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1858)
Not where Leucadian breezes sweepO’er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow,But where the glistening night-dews weepOn nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow.(The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1858)
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O’er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow.
(The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1858)
Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831) reflects Sappho’s love of the rose in an imaginary dialogue between Sappho and her younger contemporary from Samos, Pythagoras:
PYTHAGORAS AND SAPPHO,orTHE DIAMOND AND THE ROSELong time ago, ’tis well expressed,Pythagoras the seerThis question artfully addressedTo beauteous Sappho’s ear:“When hence thou shalt be forced to flee,By transmigration’s power,Wouldst thou indeed prefer to beA jewel or a flower?”The Lesbian maid these words returnedTo greet the Samian sage,“For gems my taste has never burned,And flowers my choice engage.“The glittering stones, though rich and rare,No animation know,While vegetables fine and fairWith vital action glow.“The senseless gem no pleasure moves,Displayed in fashion’s use,But flowers enjoy their gentle loves,And progeny produce.“Then when I shall surmount,” she cried,“Rude dissolution’s storm,Oh! let me not be petrified,But wear a living form.“Those matchless rays the diamond shows,With promptness I decline,That I may dwell within the roseAnd make its blossoms mine.”
PYTHAGORAS AND SAPPHO,orTHE DIAMOND AND THE ROSE
Long time ago, ’tis well expressed,Pythagoras the seerThis question artfully addressedTo beauteous Sappho’s ear:“When hence thou shalt be forced to flee,By transmigration’s power,Wouldst thou indeed prefer to beA jewel or a flower?”The Lesbian maid these words returnedTo greet the Samian sage,“For gems my taste has never burned,And flowers my choice engage.“The glittering stones, though rich and rare,No animation know,While vegetables fine and fairWith vital action glow.“The senseless gem no pleasure moves,Displayed in fashion’s use,But flowers enjoy their gentle loves,And progeny produce.“Then when I shall surmount,” she cried,“Rude dissolution’s storm,Oh! let me not be petrified,But wear a living form.“Those matchless rays the diamond shows,With promptness I decline,That I may dwell within the roseAnd make its blossoms mine.”
Long time ago, ’tis well expressed,Pythagoras the seerThis question artfully addressedTo beauteous Sappho’s ear:
Long time ago, ’tis well expressed,
Pythagoras the seer
This question artfully addressed
To beauteous Sappho’s ear:
“When hence thou shalt be forced to flee,By transmigration’s power,Wouldst thou indeed prefer to beA jewel or a flower?”
“When hence thou shalt be forced to flee,
By transmigration’s power,
Wouldst thou indeed prefer to be
A jewel or a flower?”
The Lesbian maid these words returnedTo greet the Samian sage,“For gems my taste has never burned,And flowers my choice engage.
The Lesbian maid these words returned
To greet the Samian sage,
“For gems my taste has never burned,
And flowers my choice engage.
“The glittering stones, though rich and rare,No animation know,While vegetables fine and fairWith vital action glow.
“The glittering stones, though rich and rare,
No animation know,
While vegetables fine and fair
With vital action glow.
“The senseless gem no pleasure moves,Displayed in fashion’s use,But flowers enjoy their gentle loves,And progeny produce.
“The senseless gem no pleasure moves,
Displayed in fashion’s use,
But flowers enjoy their gentle loves,
And progeny produce.
“Then when I shall surmount,” she cried,“Rude dissolution’s storm,Oh! let me not be petrified,But wear a living form.
“Then when I shall surmount,” she cried,
“Rude dissolution’s storm,
Oh! let me not be petrified,
But wear a living form.
“Those matchless rays the diamond shows,With promptness I decline,That I may dwell within the roseAnd make its blossoms mine.”
“Those matchless rays the diamond shows,
With promptness I decline,
That I may dwell within the rose
And make its blossoms mine.”
In recent years many poems have appeared on Sappho. For example, thinking perhaps of the story that Solon asked his nephew to teach him a song of Sappho before he died, and echoing the epithet of “sweetly smiling” in Alcaeus’ fragment, Richard Hovey (1864-1900) wrote inThe Independent, April 30, 1896,A Dream of Sappho:
I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night,Her nightingales were singing in the treesBeside the castled river; and the windFell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek,And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;The night went on with me into my dream,This only I remember, that I said:‘O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,Sing me one song of those lost books of yoursFor which we poets still go sorrowing;That when I meet my fellows on the earthI may rejoice them more than many pearls;’And she, the sweetly-smiling, answered me,As one who dreams: ‘I have forgotten them!’
I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night,Her nightingales were singing in the treesBeside the castled river; and the windFell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek,And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;The night went on with me into my dream,This only I remember, that I said:‘O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,Sing me one song of those lost books of yoursFor which we poets still go sorrowing;That when I meet my fellows on the earthI may rejoice them more than many pearls;’And she, the sweetly-smiling, answered me,As one who dreams: ‘I have forgotten them!’
I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night,
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek,
And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;
The night went on with me into my dream,
This only I remember, that I said:
‘O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,
Sing me one song of those lost books of yours
For which we poets still go sorrowing;
That when I meet my fellows on the earth
I may rejoice them more than many pearls;’
And she, the sweetly-smiling, answered me,
As one who dreams: ‘I have forgotten them!’
We have referred above to Gamaliel Bradford’s use of Sappho’s apple on the topmost bough; and Maurice Thompson, the author ofAlice of Old Vincennesand theSapphic Secret, published as his last song,Sappho’s AppleinThe Independent, Feb. 21, 1901:
SAPPHO’S APPLEA dreamy languor lapsed along,And stirred the dusky-bannered boughs;With half a sigh and half a songThe crooning tree did nod and drowse,While far aloft blush-tinted hungOne perfect apple maiden-sweet,At which the gatherers vainly flung,And could not get to hoard or eat.“Reddest and best,” they growled and wentSlowly away, each with his loadFragrant upon his shoulders bent,The hill-flowers darkening where they trode;“Reddest and best; but not for us;Some loafing lout will see it fall;The laborer’s prize—’twas ever thus—Is his who never works at all!”Soon came a vagrant, loitering,His young face browned by wind and sun,Weary, yet blithe and prone to sing,Tramping his way to Avalon;Even I it was, who, long athirstAnd hungry, saw the apple shine;Then wondrous wild sweet singing burstFlame-like across these lips of mine.“O, ruby-flushed and flaring gold,Thou splendid lone one left for me,Apple of love to filch and hold,Fruit-glory of a kingly tree!Drop, drop into my hand,That I may hide thee in my breast,And bear thee far o’er sea and land,A captive, to the purple West.”
SAPPHO’S APPLE
A dreamy languor lapsed along,And stirred the dusky-bannered boughs;With half a sigh and half a songThe crooning tree did nod and drowse,While far aloft blush-tinted hungOne perfect apple maiden-sweet,At which the gatherers vainly flung,And could not get to hoard or eat.“Reddest and best,” they growled and wentSlowly away, each with his loadFragrant upon his shoulders bent,The hill-flowers darkening where they trode;“Reddest and best; but not for us;Some loafing lout will see it fall;The laborer’s prize—’twas ever thus—Is his who never works at all!”Soon came a vagrant, loitering,His young face browned by wind and sun,Weary, yet blithe and prone to sing,Tramping his way to Avalon;Even I it was, who, long athirstAnd hungry, saw the apple shine;Then wondrous wild sweet singing burstFlame-like across these lips of mine.“O, ruby-flushed and flaring gold,Thou splendid lone one left for me,Apple of love to filch and hold,Fruit-glory of a kingly tree!Drop, drop into my hand,That I may hide thee in my breast,And bear thee far o’er sea and land,A captive, to the purple West.”
A dreamy languor lapsed along,And stirred the dusky-bannered boughs;With half a sigh and half a songThe crooning tree did nod and drowse,While far aloft blush-tinted hungOne perfect apple maiden-sweet,At which the gatherers vainly flung,And could not get to hoard or eat.
A dreamy languor lapsed along,
And stirred the dusky-bannered boughs;
With half a sigh and half a song
The crooning tree did nod and drowse,
While far aloft blush-tinted hung
One perfect apple maiden-sweet,
At which the gatherers vainly flung,
And could not get to hoard or eat.
“Reddest and best,” they growled and wentSlowly away, each with his loadFragrant upon his shoulders bent,The hill-flowers darkening where they trode;“Reddest and best; but not for us;Some loafing lout will see it fall;The laborer’s prize—’twas ever thus—Is his who never works at all!”
“Reddest and best,” they growled and went
Slowly away, each with his load
Fragrant upon his shoulders bent,
The hill-flowers darkening where they trode;
“Reddest and best; but not for us;
Some loafing lout will see it fall;
The laborer’s prize—’twas ever thus—
Is his who never works at all!”
Soon came a vagrant, loitering,His young face browned by wind and sun,Weary, yet blithe and prone to sing,Tramping his way to Avalon;Even I it was, who, long athirstAnd hungry, saw the apple shine;Then wondrous wild sweet singing burstFlame-like across these lips of mine.
Soon came a vagrant, loitering,
His young face browned by wind and sun,
Weary, yet blithe and prone to sing,
Tramping his way to Avalon;
Even I it was, who, long athirst
And hungry, saw the apple shine;
Then wondrous wild sweet singing burst
Flame-like across these lips of mine.
“O, ruby-flushed and flaring gold,Thou splendid lone one left for me,Apple of love to filch and hold,Fruit-glory of a kingly tree!Drop, drop into my hand,That I may hide thee in my breast,And bear thee far o’er sea and land,A captive, to the purple West.”
“O, ruby-flushed and flaring gold,
Thou splendid lone one left for me,
Apple of love to filch and hold,
Fruit-glory of a kingly tree!
Drop, drop into my hand,
That I may hide thee in my breast,
And bear thee far o’er sea and land,
A captive, to the purple West.”
Renée Vivien (1877-1909), an American poetess of great promise who died all too young and all too unknown to students of Sappho (see bibliography), made some very nice French verse translations of Sappho which were published under a pseudonym in 1903 and reprinted anonymously in 1909. She pays her tribute to Sappho in these two verses:
Les siècles attentifs se penchent pour entendreLes lambeaux de tes chants....
Les siècles attentifs se penchent pour entendreLes lambeaux de tes chants....
Les siècles attentifs se penchent pour entendre
Les lambeaux de tes chants....
The Maryland poet, Father John B. Tabb, the only American who with Emerson was admitted to the OxfordGarland Series on Epigrams, has two poems on Sappho, in the first of which Keats is appropriately classed with Sappho:183
KEATS—SAPPHOMethinks, when first the nightingaleWas mated to thy deathless song,That Sappho with emotion pale,Amid the Olympian throng,Again, as in the Lesbian grove,Stood listening with lips apart,To hear in thy melodious loveThe pantings of her heart.
KEATS—SAPPHO
Methinks, when first the nightingaleWas mated to thy deathless song,That Sappho with emotion pale,Amid the Olympian throng,Again, as in the Lesbian grove,Stood listening with lips apart,To hear in thy melodious loveThe pantings of her heart.
Methinks, when first the nightingale
Was mated to thy deathless song,
That Sappho with emotion pale,
Amid the Olympian throng,
Again, as in the Lesbian grove,
Stood listening with lips apart,
To hear in thy melodious love
The pantings of her heart.
SAPPHOA light upon the headland, flaming far,We see thee o’er the widening waves of time,Impassioned as a palpitating star,Big with prophetic destiny sublime:A momentary flash—a burst of song—Then silence, and a withering blank of pain.We wait, alas! in tedious vigils long,The meteor-gleam that cometh not again!Our eyes are heavy, and our visage wan:Our breath—a phantom of the darkness—glidesGhostlike to swell the dismal caravanOf shadows, where thy lingering splendor hides,Till, with our tears and ineffectual sighs,We quench the spark a smouldering hope supplies.
SAPPHO
A light upon the headland, flaming far,We see thee o’er the widening waves of time,Impassioned as a palpitating star,Big with prophetic destiny sublime:A momentary flash—a burst of song—Then silence, and a withering blank of pain.We wait, alas! in tedious vigils long,The meteor-gleam that cometh not again!Our eyes are heavy, and our visage wan:Our breath—a phantom of the darkness—glidesGhostlike to swell the dismal caravanOf shadows, where thy lingering splendor hides,Till, with our tears and ineffectual sighs,We quench the spark a smouldering hope supplies.
A light upon the headland, flaming far,
We see thee o’er the widening waves of time,
Impassioned as a palpitating star,
Big with prophetic destiny sublime:
A momentary flash—a burst of song—
Then silence, and a withering blank of pain.
We wait, alas! in tedious vigils long,
The meteor-gleam that cometh not again!
Our eyes are heavy, and our visage wan:
Our breath—a phantom of the darkness—glides
Ghostlike to swell the dismal caravan
Of shadows, where thy lingering splendor hides,
Till, with our tears and ineffectual sighs,
We quench the spark a smouldering hope supplies.
We have already referred to Alan Seeger’s use of the famous midnight fragment (p. 78). The magazines are fond of the subject of Sappho and Phaon and have countless poems which refer to Phaon and the Leucadian Leap. Buchanan has a poem calledThe Leucadian Rock; and Edward J. O’Brien in theLiberatorsays:
Stir not the grasses here,O wandering zephyr,For Phaon travelled far over alien foamBefore his footsteps turned in soft contentmentHome to the green thresholdHe had forgotten.
Stir not the grasses here,O wandering zephyr,For Phaon travelled far over alien foamBefore his footsteps turned in soft contentmentHome to the green thresholdHe had forgotten.
Stir not the grasses here,
O wandering zephyr,
For Phaon travelled far over alien foam
Before his footsteps turned in soft contentment
Home to the green threshold
He had forgotten.
Sara Teasdale, the modern burning American Sappho, has a poem onPhaon and the Leucadian LeapinScribner’s Magazine, for December, 1913, pp. 725-6. The poem is too long to quote entire, and I can give only a few lines:
Farewell; across the threshold many feetShall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again....‘Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?’Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,But they go driven, straining back with fear,And Sappho goes as lightly as a leafBlown from brown autumn forests to the sea....Yet they shall say: ‘It was for Cercolas—She died because she could not bear her love.’...Others shall say: ‘Grave Dica wrought her death.’...Ah, Dica, it is not for thee I go.And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sailHere in the windless harbor, for the south....How should they know that Sappho lived and diedFaithful to love, not faithful to the lover,...The gods have given life, I gave them song;The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
Farewell; across the threshold many feetShall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again....‘Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?’Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,But they go driven, straining back with fear,And Sappho goes as lightly as a leafBlown from brown autumn forests to the sea....Yet they shall say: ‘It was for Cercolas—She died because she could not bear her love.’...Others shall say: ‘Grave Dica wrought her death.’...Ah, Dica, it is not for thee I go.And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sailHere in the windless harbor, for the south....How should they know that Sappho lived and diedFaithful to love, not faithful to the lover,...The gods have given life, I gave them song;The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
Farewell; across the threshold many feet
Shall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again.
...
‘Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?’
Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,
But they go driven, straining back with fear,
And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf
Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea.
...
Yet they shall say: ‘It was for Cercolas—
She died because she could not bear her love.’
...
Others shall say: ‘Grave Dica wrought her death.’
...
Ah, Dica, it is not for thee I go.
And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sail
Here in the windless harbor, for the south.
...
How should they know that Sappho lived and died
Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover,
...
The gods have given life, I gave them song;
The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
Alfred Noyes, in his poemIn Memory of Swinburneuses the fragment which Swinburne himself expanded (cf. p. 12). Edwin Arlington Robinson184has translatedThe Dust of Timas(cf. p. 100), which has recently been diluted by William Stebbing into twelve verses in his poem,A Bride in Death. Robinson’s renderingof Posidippus’ epigram on Doricha is also excellent:
So now the very bones of you are goneWhere they were dust and ashes long ago;And there was the last ribbon you tied onTo bind your hair, and that is dust also;And somewhere there is dust that was of oldA soft and scented garment that you wore—The same that once till dawn did closely foldYou in with fair Charaxus, fair no more.But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song,Will make your name a word for all to learn,And all to love thereafter, even whileIt’s but a name; and this will be as longAs there are distant ships that will returnAgain to your Naucratis and the Nile.
So now the very bones of you are goneWhere they were dust and ashes long ago;And there was the last ribbon you tied onTo bind your hair, and that is dust also;And somewhere there is dust that was of oldA soft and scented garment that you wore—The same that once till dawn did closely foldYou in with fair Charaxus, fair no more.But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song,Will make your name a word for all to learn,And all to love thereafter, even whileIt’s but a name; and this will be as longAs there are distant ships that will returnAgain to your Naucratis and the Nile.
So now the very bones of you are goneWhere they were dust and ashes long ago;And there was the last ribbon you tied onTo bind your hair, and that is dust also;And somewhere there is dust that was of oldA soft and scented garment that you wore—The same that once till dawn did closely foldYou in with fair Charaxus, fair no more.
So now the very bones of you are gone
Where they were dust and ashes long ago;
And there was the last ribbon you tied on
To bind your hair, and that is dust also;
And somewhere there is dust that was of old
A soft and scented garment that you wore—
The same that once till dawn did closely fold
You in with fair Charaxus, fair no more.
But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song,Will make your name a word for all to learn,And all to love thereafter, even whileIt’s but a name; and this will be as longAs there are distant ships that will returnAgain to your Naucratis and the Nile.
But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song,
Will make your name a word for all to learn,
And all to love thereafter, even while
It’s but a name; and this will be as long
As there are distant ships that will return
Again to your Naucratis and the Nile.
There is little of Sappho except in name in Agnes Kendrick Gray’s verses185or in those of William Alexander Percy.186Harry Kemp is thinking of Byron rather than Sappho herself when he says that the lines, “the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sung,” went to his soul like a white hot iron. There is more in George Horton,187who in the last poem on Sappho which I have seen from his pen has a refrain on “bitter-sweet.” Mr. Horton forgetsthat we do know that Pittacus, (see illustrationPl. 2) was “lord of Lesbos’ isle,” but the general sentiment is true all the same:
BALLADE OF SAPPHO’S FAMEOh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isleWhen Sappho sang for many a year,And great Apollo’s self the while,Ceased from the lyre and bent to hear?The titles to his heart so near,His lineage, who can now repeat?Yet she escaped oblivion drearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”And who by wealth or selfish guilebecame the island’s proudest peer?What siren with voluptuous wileWas potent at the royal ear?Who gained renown with sword and spear?Their fame is dust beneath the feetOf Time, and she alone is dearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”Our joy is sadder than the smileOf grief that cannot shed a tear;Our lives are like a little mileMarked on the orbit of a sphere;The wisdom that we most revereIs mixed with folly and defeat:Her laurel never can grow sereWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”ENVOIFrom out that pallid atmosphereWhere dawn and darkness vaguely meet,Comes but her lark-note cool and clearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
BALLADE OF SAPPHO’S FAME
Oh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isleWhen Sappho sang for many a year,And great Apollo’s self the while,Ceased from the lyre and bent to hear?The titles to his heart so near,His lineage, who can now repeat?Yet she escaped oblivion drearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”And who by wealth or selfish guilebecame the island’s proudest peer?What siren with voluptuous wileWas potent at the royal ear?Who gained renown with sword and spear?Their fame is dust beneath the feetOf Time, and she alone is dearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”Our joy is sadder than the smileOf grief that cannot shed a tear;Our lives are like a little mileMarked on the orbit of a sphere;The wisdom that we most revereIs mixed with folly and defeat:Her laurel never can grow sereWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”ENVOIFrom out that pallid atmosphereWhere dawn and darkness vaguely meet,Comes but her lark-note cool and clearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
Oh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isleWhen Sappho sang for many a year,And great Apollo’s self the while,Ceased from the lyre and bent to hear?The titles to his heart so near,His lineage, who can now repeat?Yet she escaped oblivion drearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
Oh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isle
When Sappho sang for many a year,
And great Apollo’s self the while,
Ceased from the lyre and bent to hear?
The titles to his heart so near,
His lineage, who can now repeat?
Yet she escaped oblivion drear
Who said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
And who by wealth or selfish guilebecame the island’s proudest peer?What siren with voluptuous wileWas potent at the royal ear?Who gained renown with sword and spear?Their fame is dust beneath the feetOf Time, and she alone is dearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
And who by wealth or selfish guile
became the island’s proudest peer?
What siren with voluptuous wile
Was potent at the royal ear?
Who gained renown with sword and spear?
Their fame is dust beneath the feet
Of Time, and she alone is dear
Who said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
Our joy is sadder than the smileOf grief that cannot shed a tear;Our lives are like a little mileMarked on the orbit of a sphere;The wisdom that we most revereIs mixed with folly and defeat:Her laurel never can grow sereWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
Our joy is sadder than the smile
Of grief that cannot shed a tear;
Our lives are like a little mile
Marked on the orbit of a sphere;
The wisdom that we most revere
Is mixed with folly and defeat:
Her laurel never can grow sere
Who said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
ENVOI
From out that pallid atmosphereWhere dawn and darkness vaguely meet,Comes but her lark-note cool and clearWho said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
From out that pallid atmosphere
Where dawn and darkness vaguely meet,
Comes but her lark-note cool and clear
Who said that love is “bitter-sweet.”
I have quoted enough to discredit “The King of the Black Isles” who in theLine O’Typeof theChicago Tribunefor November, 1922, publishes a poem with the alliterative caption,A Lady Lived in Lesbos.188The last of the three stanzas is:
We have forgotten beauty and all our goods are good,And little we remember now the dryads and the wood,And only old philosophers and foolish dreamers knowWhat lady lived in Lesbos a weary time ago.
We have forgotten beauty and all our goods are good,And little we remember now the dryads and the wood,And only old philosophers and foolish dreamers knowWhat lady lived in Lesbos a weary time ago.
We have forgotten beauty and all our goods are good,
And little we remember now the dryads and the wood,
And only old philosophers and foolish dreamers know
What lady lived in Lesbos a weary time ago.
Even as this book goes to press, Tristram Tupper issues his novel,Adventuring(Doran Co., N. Y., 1923), in which Sappho is discovered even down in the valley of the Shenandoah:
“On such a night Jay Singleton discovered the most beloved singer of all the ages. Not in the Lesbian starlit dusk, nor yet in the golden-sandaled dawn, but beneath a smoky lamp in the valley of the Shenandoah. Found her in a book. And heliked the cut of her verses—three pentameters followed by a dipody; and he liked the cut of her clothes—sort of loose and careless before the Christian era. ‘No use falling in love,’ said Jay Singleton to himself. ‘She sang her songs six hundred yearsB.C.’“But he pored over another fragment, translated another quatrain, looked up each word, strung them together, made a kind of rime. In a word, Jay Singleton tried to improve a bit on the inimitable Sappho. And that night out on his porch where no one could hear, not even at the post office quarter of a mile away, he struck the strings of his guitar and he sang this surprising Sapphic:Man is peer of gods in those moments afterLove has silenced song and has banished laughter;Then—to her who smiles at him softly through tears—He has no peers.“He laid aside his guitar and lit his pipe, that made a pink glow in the darkness. He tried to form in his mind an image of Sappho and of her Isle of Lesbos, tried to wander back through the labyrinthine ages, ages misty with music, dusky with gold, red with wars, and blushing with roses—forgotten wars, faded roses mingling to form the perfume of the centuries. He pulled on his pipe. ‘Where is she now?’ Easy enough to imagine Sappho with her ivory throat, her violet eyes and sandals of golden dawn, back in the golden dawn of poetry. For, overhead, these were her stars. But he wondered about the form her singing soul had taken after she had leaped into the Ionian Sea.Had the waters quenched the spark, or was her soul immortal—a flame that twenty-five hundred years had failed to extinguish? Again he asked: ‘Where are you now? Where in this, the most cluttered up of all the ages?’ He tried to imagine her beside the Little Calfpasture—Sappho beside the Calfpasture Creek, sighing, laughing, singing her lyrics! ‘No use falling in love! Sang your songs twenty-five hundred years ago!’”In May, 1922, Miss Bertha Bennett of Carleton College produced an interesting pageant “A Grecian Festival” on the Sappho and Phaon story, with adaptations of Sappho’s first two odes and representing Sappho as leaping into Lyman lake. It ends with the union of Sappho and Phaon, after death, on Mt. Olympus.
“On such a night Jay Singleton discovered the most beloved singer of all the ages. Not in the Lesbian starlit dusk, nor yet in the golden-sandaled dawn, but beneath a smoky lamp in the valley of the Shenandoah. Found her in a book. And heliked the cut of her verses—three pentameters followed by a dipody; and he liked the cut of her clothes—sort of loose and careless before the Christian era. ‘No use falling in love,’ said Jay Singleton to himself. ‘She sang her songs six hundred yearsB.C.’
“But he pored over another fragment, translated another quatrain, looked up each word, strung them together, made a kind of rime. In a word, Jay Singleton tried to improve a bit on the inimitable Sappho. And that night out on his porch where no one could hear, not even at the post office quarter of a mile away, he struck the strings of his guitar and he sang this surprising Sapphic:
Man is peer of gods in those moments afterLove has silenced song and has banished laughter;Then—to her who smiles at him softly through tears—He has no peers.
Man is peer of gods in those moments afterLove has silenced song and has banished laughter;Then—to her who smiles at him softly through tears—He has no peers.
Man is peer of gods in those moments after
Love has silenced song and has banished laughter;
Then—to her who smiles at him softly through tears—
He has no peers.
“He laid aside his guitar and lit his pipe, that made a pink glow in the darkness. He tried to form in his mind an image of Sappho and of her Isle of Lesbos, tried to wander back through the labyrinthine ages, ages misty with music, dusky with gold, red with wars, and blushing with roses—forgotten wars, faded roses mingling to form the perfume of the centuries. He pulled on his pipe. ‘Where is she now?’ Easy enough to imagine Sappho with her ivory throat, her violet eyes and sandals of golden dawn, back in the golden dawn of poetry. For, overhead, these were her stars. But he wondered about the form her singing soul had taken after she had leaped into the Ionian Sea.Had the waters quenched the spark, or was her soul immortal—a flame that twenty-five hundred years had failed to extinguish? Again he asked: ‘Where are you now? Where in this, the most cluttered up of all the ages?’ He tried to imagine her beside the Little Calfpasture—Sappho beside the Calfpasture Creek, sighing, laughing, singing her lyrics! ‘No use falling in love! Sang your songs twenty-five hundred years ago!’”
In May, 1922, Miss Bertha Bennett of Carleton College produced an interesting pageant “A Grecian Festival” on the Sappho and Phaon story, with adaptations of Sappho’s first two odes and representing Sappho as leaping into Lyman lake. It ends with the union of Sappho and Phaon, after death, on Mt. Olympus.
Many Russian writers mention Sappho, especially Vyacheslav Ivanov; and in a volume republished in Berlin, 1923, (Zovy Drevnosti,Echoes of the Past) Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont has translated eight of Sappho’s fragments. The same poet (Zacharovanny Grot,The Enchanted Grotto, vol. III, 1908) has published a poem on Sappho which my former student, now of Columbia University, Dr. Clarence Manning, has translated in the original metre:
O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow hard the poet strives revealingThe secrets beauty once has shownIn moments of immortal feeling.O Sappho, thou dost know alone—Thy name a perfume’s sweetness holy—The dreams that we one day have knownBut lost unspoken, faded wholly.O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow clearly in uncounted massesStill unreached flowers yet are grownWhere life through the charmed grotto passes.
O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow hard the poet strives revealingThe secrets beauty once has shownIn moments of immortal feeling.O Sappho, thou dost know alone—Thy name a perfume’s sweetness holy—The dreams that we one day have knownBut lost unspoken, faded wholly.O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow clearly in uncounted massesStill unreached flowers yet are grownWhere life through the charmed grotto passes.
O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow hard the poet strives revealingThe secrets beauty once has shownIn moments of immortal feeling.
O Sappho, thou dost know alone
How hard the poet strives revealing
The secrets beauty once has shown
In moments of immortal feeling.
O Sappho, thou dost know alone—Thy name a perfume’s sweetness holy—The dreams that we one day have knownBut lost unspoken, faded wholly.
O Sappho, thou dost know alone—
Thy name a perfume’s sweetness holy—
The dreams that we one day have known
But lost unspoken, faded wholly.
O Sappho, thou dost know aloneHow clearly in uncounted massesStill unreached flowers yet are grownWhere life through the charmed grotto passes.
O Sappho, thou dost know alone
How clearly in uncounted masses
Still unreached flowers yet are grown
Where life through the charmed grotto passes.
On the operatic stage Sappho has had much influence; and above I have told how Lamartine said that Sappho was a superb subject for an opera, although he never wrote the opera, and how Grillparzer was asked to write an opera on Sappho. In French we have a lyrical tragedy,Sapho, by Empis and Courniol (1818), Delavault’sSaphoand Gounod’sSapho(1851); and a few years ago (1897) Massenet produced hisSapho. In Italian there is Pacini’sSaffo(Naples 1840); in Dutch, Bree’sSapho; in German, Schwartzendorf’sSapphoand Kanne’sSappho; in Bohemian, there is Reicha’sSappho; and in Russian, Lissenko’sSappho.
Brahms composed aSapphic Ode, which is very familiar because it is often sung to-day and there is an English victrola record of it by Julia Clausen, but while it deals with Sappho’s favorite flower, the rose, it is Sapphic only in name and metre:
Rosen brach ich nachts mir am dunklen Hage.Süsser hauchten Duft sie, als je am Tage;Doch verstreuten reich die bewegten AesteThau, der mich nässte.Auch der Küsse Duft mich wie nie berückte,Die ich nachts von Strauch deiner Lippen pflückte;Doch auch dir bewegt ein Gemüth gleich jenen,Thauten die Thränen.(Words byHans Schmidt)
Rosen brach ich nachts mir am dunklen Hage.Süsser hauchten Duft sie, als je am Tage;Doch verstreuten reich die bewegten AesteThau, der mich nässte.Auch der Küsse Duft mich wie nie berückte,Die ich nachts von Strauch deiner Lippen pflückte;Doch auch dir bewegt ein Gemüth gleich jenen,Thauten die Thränen.(Words byHans Schmidt)
Rosen brach ich nachts mir am dunklen Hage.
Süsser hauchten Duft sie, als je am Tage;
Doch verstreuten reich die bewegten Aeste
Thau, der mich nässte.
Auch der Küsse Duft mich wie nie berückte,
Die ich nachts von Strauch deiner Lippen pflückte;
Doch auch dir bewegt ein Gemüth gleich jenen,
Thauten die Thränen.
(Words byHans Schmidt)
From the time of theSchemata Musicaprinted in Volger’s edition of 1810, down to the music published by G. Cipollini in 1890 in his brother’sSaffo, many have put Sappho’s songs to music. Even in the last few years many have tried their hand at the task. Perhaps the most successful music, with a real touch of the old Greek flavor, is that which was composed by Professor Stanley for several of Sappho’s fragments in connection with Mr. Harrison Grey Fiske’s stage presentation of Percy Mackaye’sSappho and Phaon. This has been reprinted this year in a general treatment of Greek music by Professor Stanley of the University of Michigan. The selections published include “Builders, Build the Roof-Beam High, Hymenaeon”; “Gath’rers, What Have We Forgot, Hymenaeon!”; “What shall we do, Cytherea?”; “Hollow Shell, Horny Shell”; “Akoue, Poseidon”; “Hesper, Eleleu”, etc. Miss Pearl C. Wilson, of Miss Chandor’sSchool in New York, a former student of Professor Perry of Columbia University, without making any pretense of reproducing the ancient music has composed musical accompaniments for several of the odes and also of the new fragments, which have been sung with much success. She tried to illustrate the metre of each fragment, but found it more satisfactory to write the music without the modern division into bars and rests, simply indicating the long and short syllables by notes of different values. This makes possible a lyric delivery of the poems, each line determined solely by the words and their meaning. In that way the simple melodies as expressions of the thought gain a great deal when sung. I can testify from my own public experiments in readings from Sappho that her fragments can be much better recited or chanted when accompanied by music, as I am convinced they were originally.
I venture to hope that out of all I have written in the preceding pages some fairly clear idea of Sappho may have emerged. Yet the discussion has had to wander widely through literature which has, indeed, been influenced strongly by her name but journeys far from the Lesbian lyrist herself. In closing this study it may be well, therefore, to return to the woman and the poet and add some final words.
The fragments of many other ancient poets have been collected for merely scholastic reasons, but Sappho’s literary remains are more than antique specimens. They constitute a great and noble literature and some of the latest found are among the best. They often rank as highly as the completed poems of other writers—surely an unparalleled phenomenon. In them we recognize the creator’s genius as clearly as in a fragmentary torso of Phidias we see the sculptor’s art in every chiselled line. While we miss the fullness of her life, we can restore herfigure because the fragments are “the real blood of her heart and the real flame of her thought.” Nearly every line of them has been imitated, dilated or diluted, and, disgraceful to say, many who have drunk of her living water have poisoned it into stagnant and salacious slime. There is nothing like this in the history of literature. Higginson in 1871 summarized the case:
“What other woman played such a part in moulding the great literature that has moulded the world? Colonel Mure thinks that a hundred such women might have demoralized all Greece. But it grew demoralized at any rate; and even the island where Sappho taught took its share in the degradation. If, on the other hand, the view taken of her by more careful criticism be correct, a hundred such women might have done much to save it. Modern nations must again take up the problem where Athens failed and Lesbos only pointed the way to the solution,—to create a civilization where the highest culture shall be extended to woman also. It is not enough that we should dream, with Plato, of a republic where man is free and woman but a serf. The aspirations of modern life culminate, like the greatest of modern poems, in the elevation of womanhood. ‘Die ewige Weibliche zieht uns hinan.’”
“What other woman played such a part in moulding the great literature that has moulded the world? Colonel Mure thinks that a hundred such women might have demoralized all Greece. But it grew demoralized at any rate; and even the island where Sappho taught took its share in the degradation. If, on the other hand, the view taken of her by more careful criticism be correct, a hundred such women might have done much to save it. Modern nations must again take up the problem where Athens failed and Lesbos only pointed the way to the solution,—to create a civilization where the highest culture shall be extended to woman also. It is not enough that we should dream, with Plato, of a republic where man is free and woman but a serf. The aspirations of modern life culminate, like the greatest of modern poems, in the elevation of womanhood. ‘Die ewige Weibliche zieht uns hinan.’”
Sappho, then, was a pure and good woman, busily and successfully engaged in the work of her chosen profession. She was a teacher ofsinging and dancing and the technique of poetry, and to give her pupils the finest models she applied herself so seriously to the lyric art that she reached a perfection in it to which no other classic poet attained. If she ever collected her verse it was only to promote the idealization of marriage pageants, and not with the purpose of publishing a full edition of her songs. It would not be safe to deny that there was a practically useful collection of Sappho’s songs in the archives of her school or guild or in the Temple of Aphrodite, but no copies were sold at the book-stalls in her own day as certainly was later the case in fifth century Athens.
Sappho, in fact, must be listed with two other names which, taken together, form a unique and astonishing group, a group whose peculiar and distinguishing feature is that their enduring thoughts and imperishable words were indispensable necessities in their life-work rather than productions as literature for the sake of literature. It is not because of the accidental alliteration that we rank Sappho with Socrates and Shakespeare. These great exemplars of song, ethics, and drama, respectively, were alike in that it was not by their intention that their works became literature. Shakespeare as atheatrical manager was obliged by his position to write plays that would attract audiences. He was compelled by his genius to make those dramas imperishable. But if he had had his way none of them would ever have been printed. Our gratitude must be given to prompters’ copies and to literary thieves. Socrates was a teacher whose purely oral lessons his pupils, Plato and Xenophon, committed to writing that the master’s inspiring thoughts might not die.
Socrates’ love for his young disciples was a love passing the love of women. The myriad-minded man of Stratford,—“Gentle Will,” as his comrades called him,—had an affectionate sympathy with all sorts and conditions of his fellow-men. Sappho’s love for her girl friends was so intense that there are those who, not knowing how passionate the love of woman can be for woman, still fail, despite the evidence, to recognize a love more sublime even than that for man.
How jealous she could be of her family’s good name! More than once she prays that no dishonor may come to her house. How jealous also of those who sought to win away the love of her girls and of the girls themselves when anyof them seemed to have forgotten her! How intensely, too, she could hate, the outbursting passion against the “she-dog” at the close of fragment E 36, which we have translated onpage 20, may serve to suggest. The fierceness of her satire is also incidentally shown in this as well as in other fragments. (See E 35, 37, 71,et al.)
Like Socrates and Shakespeare Sappho had a planetary mind swinging in its orbit with ease through all realms, whether of nature, or human nature, or the divine nature of the unseen world. This need not be elaborated here, save in Sappho’s case. But it may be worth while to repeat some of the evidence as to Sappho’s wide range of thought as it is seen in a few typical instances. She loved the roses, the clover, and the anthrysc. She loved the doves and the nightingales, and knew their colorings and discerned their ways. But the unplucked apple on the top of the topmost bough, the myriad ears of the listening night that hears what the girl across the sea says and relays it right over the waves, the rosy-fingered moon well above the horizon and launching light across the rolling sea and over the fields of flowers, reveal even in the fragments which are “small butroses” how surpassing were her instincts for nature’s loftier meanings as well as its minute details and how exquisite were her comparisons. As for the phases of love—they were her daily business,—and each new couple whose wedding festivities she arranged in song gave her new material. Where in all literature is there a finer example of the union of human love along with insight into the soul of nature than in the ode,To Absent Anactoria? (See p. 72).
As we have said, she knew the heart of the Greek bride and her dread at the loss of her free virginity. Mother love, too, was never more exquisitely portrayed than in the song we have quoted onpp. 27-28. But the subject of woman’s love for woman is peculiarly her own. The finest lines in all Sappho’s poetry are those descriptive of Anactoria in a poem which we might callOld Love is Best(E. 38,pp. 82-83 above).
Finished style, the γλαφυρὸς χαρακτήρ, as the Greek critics called it, simple purity but effective luminosity and exquisite rarity of expression, faultless constraint, fine taste in choosing appropriate subjects, marvellous verbal economy, comprehensive power in single words, fiery passion as well as austerity, richness andbeauty, good arrangement of words, assonance, alliteration, consonantal harmonies, lingering vowel music and melody, produced often by the repetition of long vowels, the soft Aeolic quality of the Greek sounds, swift changes of nature and enchanting images, varied metres, but above all else, charm, that greatest characteristic of Sappho so emphasized by the ancients and moderns,—all these qualities she used that her songs and hymns might be perfect. It is this simple natural perfection of her art, like the “nothing too much” of the Parthenon frieze, that makes her untranslatable, even though it is precisely the quality which modern literature lacks but needs. Her nature was so great and her genius so marvellous and her purposes so inexorable that, in attending with her whole soul to her business as the poetic and musical caterer for successive weddings upon an ancient and interesting island, she incidentally made word-music and created thought-images which sounded the depths and scaled the heights of human passion and which winged their way to distant shores. The strains of her songs are beginning to be heard everywhere and are ever growing clearer and sweeter in this present timely century, the century ofwoman’s exaltation and glorification. Her genius is concisely summed up by Watts-Dunton in hisEssay on Poetry, as follows: “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.”
In the Lesbus and the Asia Minor of Sappho’s day as in those of Homer, women were at their zenith and were allowed greater freedom in life and speech than in later Athens where woman’s position had reached its nadir, even though literature and art had attained their highest bloom. In Athens women were cabin’d, cribb’d, confined. The more ancient Greeks in general, however, even if their law made the wife the property of her lord and master, appreciated their women and considered them close to the divine, else they would not have appointed them to important priesthoods and other offices and to be interpreters of the desires of the gods and counsellors of their own political troubles. Sappho was a twentieth century woman living in sixth century Lesbus, who could go abouttown without a chaperon and take part in the most intellectual and religious meetings. Of course she was “ni une sainte ni surtout une prude,” as Reinach says. Rarely is a woman who is interesting a “saint.” Reinach compares her also to Madame de Sévigné, who wrote to her daughter “paroles de feu et de fièvre ... tout pareils à ceux de l’amour.” What with her teaching, with her own writings, and with the executive work of thehetairiai, those ancient Y. W. C. A.’s for the cultivation of poetry and music, which Mackail has so aptly compared with the Courts of Love which existed in Languedoc from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, she was too noble and too busy to be devoted to ignobler ways, falsely ascribed to her. But her love was deeper than that of the schoolgirl in convent, conservatory of music, or literary club. She was no Ruskin-like school-mistress presiding over a group of virtuous but bold young women. She was respectable and respected. There was in her sacred guild under the patronage of Aphrodite “l’étroite et tendre intimité de jeunes filles de bonne naissance entre elles et avec leurs dirigeantes” (Reinach). But we utterly reject to-day the Athenian vaudeville idea ofSappho, who never should have been branded a courtesan.
How the fine radiance Sappho shed on woman’s love for woman and on her love of love and on the glory of pure and honorable marriage shines at last across these twenty-five hundred years! Her figure stands there on her isle. In itself it is white marble veined with gold. Much mud from many lands has been flung against it. For centuries, almost for millenniums, it has been soiled and stained. Even good men have come to think of the stains as integral parts of the statue, and of the gold as base metal. But the winds and rains of time have tired out the soilers and washed the figure white and clean of all Attic and all later defilings. It is all pure marble now, veined with warm gold. Something that suggests the Pygmalion miracle is happening to it. The statue is alive and luminous with its own beauty, grace, and power. Sappho’s poetry deals with the eternal experiences of the human heart and carries with it those touches which make the whole world kin. As T. G. Tucker says: “Love and Sorrow are re-born with every human being. Time and civilisation make little difference.”