Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit,Lady, not longer!Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,Billowing in thy yokèd car to SapphoForth from thy father’sGolden house in pity!... I remember:Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beatingFast their wings above the dusky harvests,Down the pale heavens,Lighting anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:‘Maiden, what betideth thee? Or whereforeCallest upon me?‘What is hers the longing more than others,Here in this mad heart? And who the lovelyOne belovèd thou wouldst lure to loving?Sappho, who wrongs thee?’‘See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,Howso unwilling....’Come again to me! O now! Release me!End the great pang! And all my heart desirethNow of fulfilment, fulfil! O Aphrodite,Fight by my shoulder!(W. E. Leonard, unpublished)
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit,Lady, not longer!Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,Billowing in thy yokèd car to SapphoForth from thy father’sGolden house in pity!... I remember:Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beatingFast their wings above the dusky harvests,Down the pale heavens,Lighting anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:‘Maiden, what betideth thee? Or whereforeCallest upon me?‘What is hers the longing more than others,Here in this mad heart? And who the lovelyOne belovèd thou wouldst lure to loving?Sappho, who wrongs thee?’‘See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,Howso unwilling....’Come again to me! O now! Release me!End the great pang! And all my heart desirethNow of fulfilment, fulfil! O Aphrodite,Fight by my shoulder!(W. E. Leonard, unpublished)
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit,Lady, not longer!
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,
Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,
With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit,
Lady, not longer!
Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,Billowing in thy yokèd car to SapphoForth from thy father’s
Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!
Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,
Billowing in thy yokèd car to Sappho
Forth from thy father’s
Golden house in pity!... I remember:Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beatingFast their wings above the dusky harvests,Down the pale heavens,
Golden house in pity!... I remember:
Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beating
Fast their wings above the dusky harvests,
Down the pale heavens,
Lighting anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:‘Maiden, what betideth thee? Or whereforeCallest upon me?
Lighting anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,
Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:
‘Maiden, what betideth thee? Or wherefore
Callest upon me?
‘What is hers the longing more than others,Here in this mad heart? And who the lovelyOne belovèd thou wouldst lure to loving?Sappho, who wrongs thee?’
‘What is hers the longing more than others,
Here in this mad heart? And who the lovely
One belovèd thou wouldst lure to loving?
Sappho, who wrongs thee?’
‘See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,Howso unwilling....’
‘See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;
Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;
Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,
Howso unwilling....’
Come again to me! O now! Release me!End the great pang! And all my heart desirethNow of fulfilment, fulfil! O Aphrodite,Fight by my shoulder!
Come again to me! O now! Release me!
End the great pang! And all my heart desireth
Now of fulfilment, fulfil! O Aphrodite,
Fight by my shoulder!
(W. E. Leonard, unpublished)
Richly throned, O deathless one, Aphrodite,Child of Zeus, enchantress-queen, I beseech theeLet not grief nor harrowing anguish master,Lady, my spirit.Ah! come hither. Erstwhile indeed thou heardestWhen afar my sorrowful cry of mourningSmote thine ears, and then from thy father’s mansionsGolden thou camest,Driving forth thy chariot, and fair birds bore theeSpeeding onward over the earth’s dark shadows,Waving oft their shimmering plumes thro’ heaven’sEther encircling.Quickly drew they nigh me, and thou, blest presence,Sweetest smile divine on thy face immortal,Thou didst seek what sorrow was mine to suffer,Wherefore I called thee.What my soul, too, craved with intensest yearning,Frenzy’s fire enkindling. ‘Now whom,’ thou criest,‘Wouldst thou fain see led to thy love, or who, mySappho, would wrong thee?’‘Though she flees thee now, yet she soon shall woo thee,Though thy gifts she scorneth, she soon shall bring gifts;Though she loves thee not, yet she soon shall love thee,Yea, though unwilling.’Come, ah! come again, and from bitter anguishFree thy servant. All that my heart is craving,That fulfil, O goddess. Thyself, my champion,Aid in this conflict.(H. Rushton Fairclough)
Richly throned, O deathless one, Aphrodite,Child of Zeus, enchantress-queen, I beseech theeLet not grief nor harrowing anguish master,Lady, my spirit.Ah! come hither. Erstwhile indeed thou heardestWhen afar my sorrowful cry of mourningSmote thine ears, and then from thy father’s mansionsGolden thou camest,Driving forth thy chariot, and fair birds bore theeSpeeding onward over the earth’s dark shadows,Waving oft their shimmering plumes thro’ heaven’sEther encircling.Quickly drew they nigh me, and thou, blest presence,Sweetest smile divine on thy face immortal,Thou didst seek what sorrow was mine to suffer,Wherefore I called thee.What my soul, too, craved with intensest yearning,Frenzy’s fire enkindling. ‘Now whom,’ thou criest,‘Wouldst thou fain see led to thy love, or who, mySappho, would wrong thee?’‘Though she flees thee now, yet she soon shall woo thee,Though thy gifts she scorneth, she soon shall bring gifts;Though she loves thee not, yet she soon shall love thee,Yea, though unwilling.’Come, ah! come again, and from bitter anguishFree thy servant. All that my heart is craving,That fulfil, O goddess. Thyself, my champion,Aid in this conflict.(H. Rushton Fairclough)
Richly throned, O deathless one, Aphrodite,Child of Zeus, enchantress-queen, I beseech theeLet not grief nor harrowing anguish master,Lady, my spirit.
Richly throned, O deathless one, Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, enchantress-queen, I beseech thee
Let not grief nor harrowing anguish master,
Lady, my spirit.
Ah! come hither. Erstwhile indeed thou heardestWhen afar my sorrowful cry of mourningSmote thine ears, and then from thy father’s mansionsGolden thou camest,
Ah! come hither. Erstwhile indeed thou heardest
When afar my sorrowful cry of mourning
Smote thine ears, and then from thy father’s mansions
Golden thou camest,
Driving forth thy chariot, and fair birds bore theeSpeeding onward over the earth’s dark shadows,Waving oft their shimmering plumes thro’ heaven’sEther encircling.
Driving forth thy chariot, and fair birds bore thee
Speeding onward over the earth’s dark shadows,
Waving oft their shimmering plumes thro’ heaven’s
Ether encircling.
Quickly drew they nigh me, and thou, blest presence,Sweetest smile divine on thy face immortal,Thou didst seek what sorrow was mine to suffer,Wherefore I called thee.
Quickly drew they nigh me, and thou, blest presence,
Sweetest smile divine on thy face immortal,
Thou didst seek what sorrow was mine to suffer,
Wherefore I called thee.
What my soul, too, craved with intensest yearning,Frenzy’s fire enkindling. ‘Now whom,’ thou criest,‘Wouldst thou fain see led to thy love, or who, mySappho, would wrong thee?’
What my soul, too, craved with intensest yearning,
Frenzy’s fire enkindling. ‘Now whom,’ thou criest,
‘Wouldst thou fain see led to thy love, or who, my
Sappho, would wrong thee?’
‘Though she flees thee now, yet she soon shall woo thee,Though thy gifts she scorneth, she soon shall bring gifts;Though she loves thee not, yet she soon shall love thee,Yea, though unwilling.’
‘Though she flees thee now, yet she soon shall woo thee,
Though thy gifts she scorneth, she soon shall bring gifts;
Though she loves thee not, yet she soon shall love thee,
Yea, though unwilling.’
Come, ah! come again, and from bitter anguishFree thy servant. All that my heart is craving,That fulfil, O goddess. Thyself, my champion,Aid in this conflict.
Come, ah! come again, and from bitter anguish
Free thy servant. All that my heart is craving,
That fulfil, O goddess. Thyself, my champion,
Aid in this conflict.
(H. Rushton Fairclough)
The second ode, quoted in a mutilated condition by the treatiseOn the Sublime, is even more difficult to translate. As Wordsworth says, here
the Lesbian MaidWith finest touch of passion swayedHer own Aeolian lute.
the Lesbian MaidWith finest touch of passion swayedHer own Aeolian lute.
the Lesbian Maid
With finest touch of passion swayed
Her own Aeolian lute.
In its rich Aeolian dialect the ode glows with true Greek fire. Sappho’s words are clear but far from cold. They are a sea of glass, but asea of glass mingled with fire such as the Patmos seer saw from his island not far from Sappho’s Lesbian home. They enable us to understand why Byron inDon Juanspeaks of “the isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sung.” This is what Swinburne means, when he speaks of the fire eternal and in hisSapphicssays that about her “shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.” We know from Plutarch75that an ancient physician, Erasistratus, included this ode (which has influenced realistic descriptions of passion from Euripides and Theocritus to Swinburne and Sara Teasdale) in his book of diagnoses as a compendium of all the symptoms of corroding emotions. He applied this psychological test whenever Antiochus looked on Stratonice. “There appeared in the case of Antiochus all those symptoms which Sappho mentions: the choking of the voice, the feverish blush, the obscuring of vision, profuse sweat, disordered and tumultuous pulse and finally, when he was completely overcome, bewilderment, amazement and pallor.” Perhaps Sappho was influenced by Homer’s76description of fear and she herself surely suggested such symptoms to Lucretius.77We must regard the ode primarily as a literary product, but its pathologicalpicture of passion is hardly secondary. Even if the symptoms seem appalling to our cold and unexpressive northern blood, we must remember that this physical perturbation, as Tucker calls it, was in no way strange to the ancients. Gildersleeve put it well in his unpublished lecture on Sappho, which he so kindly placed at my disposal and to which I am greatly indebted: “if a Greek melted, he melted with a fervent heat, and if this is true of the average Greek how much more was it true of an Aeolian and an Aeolian woman, and of Sappho most Aeolian of all.” Byron refers to this ode when he says inDon Juan:
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,Although Longinus tells us there is no hymnWhere the sublime soars forth on wings more ample.
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,Although Longinus tells us there is no hymnWhere the sublime soars forth on wings more ample.
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample.
With regard to Catullus’ rendering (LI), Swinburne in hisNotes on Poems and Reviews, speaking of his poemAnactoria, says: “Catullus translated or as his countrymen would now say ‘traduced’ the Ode to Anactoria; a more beautiful translation there never was and will never be; but compared with the Greek, it is colourless and bloodless, puffed out by additions andenfeebled by alterations. Let anyone set against each other the two first stanzas, Latin and Greek, and pronounce.... Where Catullus failed I could not hope to succeed; I tried instead to reproduce in a diluted and dilated form the spirit of a poem which could not be reproduced in the body.”
Tennyson has given the best paraphrase inEleänore:
I watch thy grace; and in its placeMy heart a charmed slumber keeps,While I muse upon thy face;And a languid fire creepsThro’ my veins to all my frame,Dissolvingly and slowly: soonFrom thy rose-red lips my nameFloweth; and then, as in a swoon,With dinning sound my ears are rife,My tremulous tongue faltereth,I lose my color, I lose my breath,I drink the cup of a costly death,Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life.I die with my delight, beforeI hear what I would hear from thee.
I watch thy grace; and in its placeMy heart a charmed slumber keeps,While I muse upon thy face;And a languid fire creepsThro’ my veins to all my frame,Dissolvingly and slowly: soonFrom thy rose-red lips my nameFloweth; and then, as in a swoon,With dinning sound my ears are rife,My tremulous tongue faltereth,I lose my color, I lose my breath,I drink the cup of a costly death,Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life.I die with my delight, beforeI hear what I would hear from thee.
I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps,
While I muse upon thy face;
And a languid fire creeps
Thro’ my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly: soon
From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sound my ears are rife,
My tremulous tongue faltereth,
I lose my color, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death,
Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life.
I die with my delight, before
I hear what I would hear from thee.
The following version I have based mainly on Edmonds’ recent text,78with a conjectural restoration of the last stanza, of which only a few words are preserved in the Greek:
O life divine! to sit beforeThee while thy liquid laughter flowsMelodious, and to listen closeTo rippling notes from Love’s full score.O music of thy lovely speech!My rapid heart beats fast and high,My tongue-tied soul can only sigh,And strive for words it cannot reach.O sudden subtly-running fire!My ears with dinning ringing sing,My sight is lost, a blinded thing,Eyes, hearing, speech, in love expire,My face pale-green, like wilted grassWet by the dew and evening breeze,Yea, my whole body tremblings seize,Sweat bathes me, Death nearby doth pass,Such thrilling swoon, ecstatic deathIs for the gods, but not for me,My beggar words are naught to thee,Far-off thy laugh and perfumed breath.(D. M. R.)
O life divine! to sit beforeThee while thy liquid laughter flowsMelodious, and to listen closeTo rippling notes from Love’s full score.O music of thy lovely speech!My rapid heart beats fast and high,My tongue-tied soul can only sigh,And strive for words it cannot reach.O sudden subtly-running fire!My ears with dinning ringing sing,My sight is lost, a blinded thing,Eyes, hearing, speech, in love expire,My face pale-green, like wilted grassWet by the dew and evening breeze,Yea, my whole body tremblings seize,Sweat bathes me, Death nearby doth pass,Such thrilling swoon, ecstatic deathIs for the gods, but not for me,My beggar words are naught to thee,Far-off thy laugh and perfumed breath.(D. M. R.)
O life divine! to sit beforeThee while thy liquid laughter flowsMelodious, and to listen closeTo rippling notes from Love’s full score.
O life divine! to sit before
Thee while thy liquid laughter flows
Melodious, and to listen close
To rippling notes from Love’s full score.
O music of thy lovely speech!My rapid heart beats fast and high,My tongue-tied soul can only sigh,And strive for words it cannot reach.
O music of thy lovely speech!
My rapid heart beats fast and high,
My tongue-tied soul can only sigh,
And strive for words it cannot reach.
O sudden subtly-running fire!My ears with dinning ringing sing,My sight is lost, a blinded thing,Eyes, hearing, speech, in love expire,
O sudden subtly-running fire!
My ears with dinning ringing sing,
My sight is lost, a blinded thing,
Eyes, hearing, speech, in love expire,
My face pale-green, like wilted grassWet by the dew and evening breeze,Yea, my whole body tremblings seize,Sweat bathes me, Death nearby doth pass,
My face pale-green, like wilted grass
Wet by the dew and evening breeze,
Yea, my whole body tremblings seize,
Sweat bathes me, Death nearby doth pass,
Such thrilling swoon, ecstatic deathIs for the gods, but not for me,My beggar words are naught to thee,Far-off thy laugh and perfumed breath.
Such thrilling swoon, ecstatic death
Is for the gods, but not for me,
My beggar words are naught to thee,
Far-off thy laugh and perfumed breath.
(D. M. R.)
As J. A. K. Thomson says in his recent fascinating bookGreeks and Barbarians(London and New York, 1921), “Sappho, in the most famous of her odes, says that love makes her ‘sweat’ with agony and look ‘greener thangrass.’ Perhaps she did not turn quite so green as that, although (commentators nobly observe) she would be of an olive complexion and had never seen British grass. But even if it contain a trace of artistic exaggeration, the ode as a whole is perhaps the most convincing love-poem ever written. It breathes veracity. It has an intoxicating beauty of sound and suggestion, and it is as exact as a physiological treatise. The Greeks can do that kind of thing. Somehow we either overdo the ‘beauty’ or we overdo the physiology. The weakness of the Barbarian, said they, is that he never hits the mean. But the Greek poet seems to do it every time. We may beat them at other things, but not at that. And they do it with so little effort; sometimes, it might happen, with none at all.”
The passion of love is the supreme subject of Sappho’s songs, as shown by these first two and many a short fragment, as for example (E. 81) where Love is called for the first time in literature “sweet-bitter.” Some scholars have credited it to the much later Posidippus, but he and Meleager took the word from Sappho, though it may not have been original even with her. Sappho’s order of the compound word is generally reversed in translation, but Sir EdwinArnold says “sweetly bitter, sadly dear,” and Swinburne inTristram of Lyonessespeaks of “Sweet Love, that are so bitter.” Tennyson also has the same order inLancelot and Elaine(pp. 205-206). To Sappho love is a second death, and in the second ode death itself seems not very far away. The Greek words for swooning are mostly metaphors from death, and so we are not surprised when we read that like death love relaxes every limb and sweeps one away in its giddy swirling, a sweet-bitter resistless wild beast. Here is Sir Sidney Colvin’s translation (John Keats, 1917, p. 332): “Love the limb-loosener, the bitter-sweet torment, the wild beast there is no withstanding, never harried a more helpless victim.” Another fragment (E. 54) also shows the power of love:
Love tossed my heart as the windThat descends on the mountain oaks.(Edmonds)
Love tossed my heart as the windThat descends on the mountain oaks.(Edmonds)
Love tossed my heart as the wind
That descends on the mountain oaks.
(Edmonds)
Sappho’s range of subjects is much greater than the personal emotions of love, though very personal and individual feelings predominate. She touches almost every field of human experience, so that there is much in her scant fragments to bring her near to us. The wail againstingratitude comes home to those high-strung natures who do good to others but are sensitive to every wrong when they have the unfortunate experience of learning that one’s friends are sometimes one’s own worst enemies. “Those harm me most by whom I have done well” (Mackail). But she is not one of those who bear a grudge long, her heart is for peace. One of the few ethical fragments, as Mackail says, “is a speech of delicate self-abasement, spoken with the effect of a catch in the voice and tears behind the eyes;” “No rancour in this breast runs wild, I have the heart of a child.” Sappho’s love of sermonizing is seen in her commandment: “when anger swells in the heart, restrain the idly barking tongue.” From Aristotle’sRhetoricEdmonds (91) reconstructs another fragment:
Death is an ill; the Gods at least think so,Or else themselves had perished long ago.
Death is an ill; the Gods at least think so,Or else themselves had perished long ago.
Death is an ill; the Gods at least think so,
Or else themselves had perished long ago.
In another fragment of a different nature (E. 120) we read: “Stand up, look me in the face as friend to friend and unveil the charm that is in thy eyes.” In other fragments we enter a Lesbian lady’s home and see woman’s love of dress,—no short skirt for her, for they“wrapped her all around with soft cambric” (E. 105). “A motley gown of fair Lydian work reached down to her feet” (E. 20), or, if we believe Pollux (VII. 93), it is the Greek love of fine shoes. No Lesbian butchery for her tender feet, but she must wear soft luxurious Lydian slippers: “A broidered strap of fair Lydian work covered her feet.” Punning on the name of Timas (precious), another fragment, which perhaps refers to a statue of Aphrodite in Sappho’s home, seems to dote on fancy handkerchiefs; “and hanging on either side thy face the purple handkerchief which Timas sent for thee from Phocaea, a precious gift from a precious giver” (E. 87).79The fragment (E. 21), “shot with a thousand hues,” refers to dress rather than to the rainbow. The sight of beautiful gowns thrilled her: “Come you back, my rosebud Gongyla, in your milk-white gown.” Again she says: “Many are the golden bracelets and the purple robes, aye and the fine smooth broideries, indeed a richly varied bride-gift; and without number also are the silver goblets and the ornaments of ivory” (E. 66). She coined new words for women; she calls the chest in which women keep their perfumes and like things agrutéor hutch (E. 180). Againshe uses (E. 179) the wordBeudosfor a short diaphanous frock or blouse. She is the first to use the wordChlamys, where she speaks of Love as “coming from Heaven and throwing off his purple mantle” (E. 69). Blondes were much admired among the fair-haired Lesbians, though Sappho herself was a brunette, and so she herself mentions (E. 189) a kind of box-wood or scytharium-wood with which women dye their hair a golden color. She is fond of cassia and frankincense (E. 66), and she dotes on myrrh and royal perfumes (E. 83). She rebukes the foolish girl who prides herself on her ring.80With “a keen swift flicker of woman’s jealousy,” and well acquainted with the philosophy of clothes and with the new Ionic dresses introduced into Lesbus during her own lifetime at the beginning of the sixth centuryB.C.from Asia Minor, she jests about her rival Andromeda, the country girl who knows not how to manage the train of her new gown81(E. 98):
What rustic hoyden ever charmed the soul,That round her ankles could not kilt her coats!(Thomas DavidsoninWarner’s Libraryof the World’s Best Literature)
What rustic hoyden ever charmed the soul,That round her ankles could not kilt her coats!(Thomas DavidsoninWarner’s Libraryof the World’s Best Literature)
What rustic hoyden ever charmed the soul,
That round her ankles could not kilt her coats!
(Thomas DavidsoninWarner’s Libraryof the World’s Best Literature)
There is an intimate love of the loveliness of nature in Sappho, as we should expect of one resident on an island under Ionian skies where, as Herodotus (I. 142) says, “the climate and seasons are the most beautiful of any cities in the world.” “The many garlanded earth puts on her broidery” (E. 133). “Thus of old did the dainty feet of Cretan maidens dance pat to the music beside some lovely altar, pressing the soft smooth bloom of the grass” (E. 114). As Thomas Davidson has so well said: “every hour of the day comes to Sappho with a fresh surprise.” We lie down for a noonday siesta in “a murmurous, blossomy June,” as Stebbing puts it, in the orchard of the nymphs where (E. 4),
aroundThrough boughs of the appleCool waters sound.From the rustling leavesDrips sleep to the ground.(Unpublished,Rhys Carpenter)82
aroundThrough boughs of the appleCool waters sound.From the rustling leavesDrips sleep to the ground.(Unpublished,Rhys Carpenter)82
around
Through boughs of the apple
Cool waters sound.
From the rustling leaves
Drips sleep to the ground.
(Unpublished,Rhys Carpenter)82
In the Greek, as Edwin Cox says, “the sound of the words, the repetition of long vowels particularly omega, the poetic imagery of the whole and the drowsy cadence of the last two words give this fragment a combination of qualitiesprobably not surpassed in any language.” The beautiful verses about the pippin on the topmost branch we shall quote below. In another fragment (E. 3) Sappho sees the stars in a way which Tennyson echoes when he writes: “As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful.” Or again Sappho’s love of nature appears in the line (E. 112): “the moon rose full and the maidens took their stand about the altar.” In the newOde to Atthisthe moon is not silver (as in E. 3) but rosy-fingered: “after sunset the rosy-fingered moon beside the stars that are about her, when she spreads her light o’er briny sea and eke o’er flowery field, while the dew lies so fair on the ground and the roses revive and the dainty anthrysc and the melilot with all its blooms” (E. 86). Recently (1922) A. C. Benson inThe Reed of Panhas combined fragment (E. 3) with the beautiful half stanza quoted above, under the titleMoonrise:
The moon high-hung in the hollow nightResistless pours her silver tide;Swift, swift the stars withdraw their light,And their diminished glories hide.And where cool streams through reed-beds slip,The breeze through the orchard alley stirs,And slumber well-nigh seems to dripFrom the dark arms of dusky firs.
The moon high-hung in the hollow nightResistless pours her silver tide;Swift, swift the stars withdraw their light,And their diminished glories hide.And where cool streams through reed-beds slip,The breeze through the orchard alley stirs,And slumber well-nigh seems to dripFrom the dark arms of dusky firs.
The moon high-hung in the hollow nightResistless pours her silver tide;Swift, swift the stars withdraw their light,And their diminished glories hide.
The moon high-hung in the hollow night
Resistless pours her silver tide;
Swift, swift the stars withdraw their light,
And their diminished glories hide.
And where cool streams through reed-beds slip,The breeze through the orchard alley stirs,And slumber well-nigh seems to dripFrom the dark arms of dusky firs.
And where cool streams through reed-beds slip,
The breeze through the orchard alley stirs,
And slumber well-nigh seems to drip
From the dark arms of dusky firs.
In another fragment, which we quote below, Sappho pictures a spring midnight with almost astronomical exactness. She loves the sun: “I have loved daintiness [from childhood] and for me love possesses the brightness and beauty of the sun.” William Stebbing in hisMinstrel of Loveexpands the two verses into ten, the last “Dazzling my brain with gazing on the Sun.” Sappho knows the golden-sandalled and queenly dawn (E. 19, 177). She wrote an ode to Hesperus, the Evening Star, of which we have only the tantalizing beginning, “fairest of all the stars that shine” (E. 32). Another graceful fragment quoted in antiquity to show the charm of repetition (E. 149)83on the Evening Star, which comes in Catullus too, has influenced not only Byron inDon Juanbut Andrew Lang inHelen of Troy(II. 4) and especially Tennyson (see p. 206). “That Greek blockhead,” as Sir Walter Scott was called, though he knew more Greek than most undergraduate students of Greek to-day, even if he didn’t know the Sappho fragment, expresses the same idea in theDoom of Dever Girl, “All meet whom day and care divide.”
Sappho is fond of birds, the dove, the lovely or heavenly swallow (E. 122), the nightingale. The doves drive Aphrodite’s car in the first ode and in E. 16 “their heart grows light and they slacken the labor of their pinions.” Ben Jonson took from Sappho (E. 138) his line inThe Sad Shepherd, “the dear good angel of the spring, The nightingale,” and Swinburne, “The tawny sweet-winged thing Whose cry was but of spring.” A fragment published even since Edmonds’ book speaks of the “clear-voiced nightingales.” She knows exactly what crickets do at noon of a summer’s day. Listen to their song (E. 94), rescued from Alcaeus, to whom Bergk had wrongly ascribed it:
And clear song from beneath her wings doth raiseWhen she shouts-down the perpendicular blazeOf the outspread sunshine of noon.(Edmonds)84
And clear song from beneath her wings doth raiseWhen she shouts-down the perpendicular blazeOf the outspread sunshine of noon.(Edmonds)84
And clear song from beneath her wings doth raise
When she shouts-down the perpendicular blaze
Of the outspread sunshine of noon.
(Edmonds)84
We see the woman also in her love of flowers as well as of birds. Flowers are her favorites and she worships them with almost the modern reverence of the Japanese, whom I have sometimes seen saying their morning prayers to a beautiful bouquet. Take, for example, this simple but pretty flower-picture of Sappho’s (E. 107):
I saw one day a-gathering flowersThe daintiest little maid.(Edmonds)
I saw one day a-gathering flowersThe daintiest little maid.(Edmonds)
I saw one day a-gathering flowers
The daintiest little maid.
(Edmonds)
She sympathizes with the hyacinth (E. 151), which the shepherd tramples under foot on the mountain, and uses it in one of the most attractive flower-similes in all literature. Listen to this aubade which has been recently found and very tentatively restored (E. 82). It gives a delightful glimpse also of Sappho’s ménage:
‘Sappho, I swear if you come not forth I will love you no more. O rise and shine upon us and set free your beloved strength from the bed, and then like a pure lily beside the spring hold aloof your Chian robe and wash you in the water. And Cleïs shall bring down from your presses saffron smock and purple robe; and let a mantle be put over you and be crowned with a wreath of flowers tied about your head; and so come, sweet with all the beauty with which you make me mad. And do you, Praxinoa, roast us nuts, so that I may make the maidens a sweeter breakfast; for one of the Gods, child, has vouchsafed us a boon. This very day has Sappho the fairest of all women vowed that she will surely return unto Mytilene the dearest of all towns—return with us, the mother with her children.’Dearest Atthis, can you then forget all this that happened in the old days?... (Edmonds)
‘Sappho, I swear if you come not forth I will love you no more. O rise and shine upon us and set free your beloved strength from the bed, and then like a pure lily beside the spring hold aloof your Chian robe and wash you in the water. And Cleïs shall bring down from your presses saffron smock and purple robe; and let a mantle be put over you and be crowned with a wreath of flowers tied about your head; and so come, sweet with all the beauty with which you make me mad. And do you, Praxinoa, roast us nuts, so that I may make the maidens a sweeter breakfast; for one of the Gods, child, has vouchsafed us a boon. This very day has Sappho the fairest of all women vowed that she will surely return unto Mytilene the dearest of all towns—return with us, the mother with her children.’
Dearest Atthis, can you then forget all this that happened in the old days?... (Edmonds)
Or take this other example of Sappho’s love of flowers which Symonds has expanded into a sonnettoo long to quote here. I give Tucker’s new version:
Take sprigs of anise fairWith soft hands twined,And round thy bonny hairA chaplet bind;The Muse with smiles will blessThy blossoms gay,While from the garlandlessShe turns away.
Take sprigs of anise fairWith soft hands twined,And round thy bonny hairA chaplet bind;The Muse with smiles will blessThy blossoms gay,While from the garlandlessShe turns away.
Take sprigs of anise fair
With soft hands twined,
And round thy bonny hair
A chaplet bind;
The Muse with smiles will bless
Thy blossoms gay,
While from the garlandless
She turns away.
Sappho speaks of the golden pulses (E. 139):
[It was summer when I found youIn the meadow long ago,]And the golden vetch was growingBy the shore.(Bliss Carman)
[It was summer when I found youIn the meadow long ago,]And the golden vetch was growingBy the shore.(Bliss Carman)
[It was summer when I found you
In the meadow long ago,]
And the golden vetch was growing
By the shore.
(Bliss Carman)
Sappho knows the little and common flowers, the dainty anthrysc and melilot, the violets and the lilies (E. 86, 83, 82), but, like Pindar, she especially loves the rose. Meleager’s garland of song assigned the rose to Sappho. She says in one of the new fragments (E. 83): “with many a garland of violets and sweet roses mingled, you have decked my flowing locks as I stood by your side, and with many a woven necklet made of a hundred blossoms you have adorned my daintythroat.” Philostratus in hisLetters(51) says: “Sappho loves the rose and always crowns it with a meed of praise, likening beautiful maidens to it; and she compares it to the bared fore-arms of the Graces.” Fragment E. 68 says: “Hither pure rose-armed Graces, daughters of Zeus.” Sappho’s love of the rose has led earlier collectors of Sappho’s fragments to include among her verses the famous song in praise of the rose quoted by Achilles Tatius in his love romance onClitophon and Leucippe, which Elizabeth Barrett Browning has translated:
If Zeus chose us a King of the Flowers in his mirth,He would call to the Rose and would royally crown it,For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the grace of the earth,Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the eye of the flowers,Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair—Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowersOn pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.Ho, the Rose breathes of love! Ho, the Rose lifts the cupTo the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!Ho, the Rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west!
If Zeus chose us a King of the Flowers in his mirth,He would call to the Rose and would royally crown it,For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the grace of the earth,Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the eye of the flowers,Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair—Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowersOn pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.Ho, the Rose breathes of love! Ho, the Rose lifts the cupTo the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!Ho, the Rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west!
If Zeus chose us a King of the Flowers in his mirth,He would call to the Rose and would royally crown it,For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the grace of the earth,Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.
If Zeus chose us a King of the Flowers in his mirth,
He would call to the Rose and would royally crown it,
For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the grace of the earth,
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.
For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the eye of the flowers,Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair—Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowersOn pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.
For the Rose, ho, the Rose, is the eye of the flowers,
Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair—
Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers
On pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.
Ho, the Rose breathes of love! Ho, the Rose lifts the cupTo the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!Ho, the Rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west!
Ho, the Rose breathes of love! Ho, the Rose lifts the cup
To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!
Ho, the Rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,
Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,
As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west!
Sappho, however, does mention the roses of Pieria in the famous lines spoken with characteristic teacher’s tone, almost in the manner of Mrs. Poyser. According to Plutarch, in one passage, the verses are addressed to a wealthy woman, in another passage,85to a woman of no refinement or learning; according to Stobaeus,86to a woman of no education; probably it was some rich but uncultured Lesbian girl, who would not go to the Lesbian Smith or Vassar or Bryn Mawr:
Thou shalt die and be laid low in the grave, hidden from mortal kenUnremembered, and no song of the Muse wakens thy name again;No Pierian rose brightens thy brow, lost in the nameless throng,Thy dark spirit shall flit forth like a dream, bodiless ghosts among.(Shorey)
Thou shalt die and be laid low in the grave, hidden from mortal kenUnremembered, and no song of the Muse wakens thy name again;No Pierian rose brightens thy brow, lost in the nameless throng,Thy dark spirit shall flit forth like a dream, bodiless ghosts among.(Shorey)
Thou shalt die and be laid low in the grave, hidden from mortal ken
Unremembered, and no song of the Muse wakens thy name again;
No Pierian rose brightens thy brow, lost in the nameless throng,
Thy dark spirit shall flit forth like a dream, bodiless ghosts among.
(Shorey)
For another expanded version by Swinburne in hisAnactoriaI must refer to Wharton. Sapphohad known and loved the wee wee maiden Atthis when she was an awkward school girl, but now in the bloom of beauty after a sad parting the fickle Atthis has flitted away to another woman’s college and clean forgotten Sappho for a rival teacher, Andromeda; “I loved you, Atthis, long ago, when my own girlhood was still all flowers, and you—you seemed to me a small ungainly child” (E. 48).87“So you hate to think of me, Atthis; ’Tis all Andromeda now” (Edmonds).
Lesbus was a land of flowers, of the rose and the violet, “a land rich in corn and oil and wine, in figs and olives, in building-wood and tinted marble,” as Tucker says. But this triangular island (about thirty-five by twenty-five miles) had mountains rising from two to three thousand feet at its corners and two deep fiords on its southern coast. From the northern coast Sappho must often have looked across the short seven miles of laughing sea upon Troyland and thought of the Homeric poems in which Lesbus played such an important rôle.88The air like that of Athens as described by Pindar, with a glamor wreathing such cities as Smyrna, was so translucent that in the northeast across the dividing sea many-fountained Ida could easilybe seen. It is perhaps an accident that there is so little mention of mountain or sea in Sappho. But she was no “landlubber,” as Professor Allinson would have us believe.89Pindar and the other lyric poets were acquainted with the sea and so must Sappho have known it, as she daily saw the ships fly in and out of their haven on white wings (cf. first stanza of poem on p. 82). In one of the new fragments (E. 86) we have a marvellous picture of the sea in the last stanza of a poem which otherwise, with its love of flowers, with the beautiful simile of the rosy-fingered moon, is one of the most perfect things in literature. The telepathic and telegraphic sympathy of Sappho startles us and the wireless message sent by night across the severing sea, whose sigh you can hear in the original Greek, anticipates the modern radio.90As this is a memory poem, andAnactoria, like Hallam, is “lost,” for the time being at least, I have followed as a model Tennyson’sIn Memoriamin metre, stanza, and rhyming. The first line seems to be “remembered” in rhyme as it were after the interval during which the second and third lines have been made and rhymed.
SAPPHO’S GIRL FRIEND ACROSS THE SEAAtthis, in Sardis far awayAnactoria dear to theeAnd dear indeed alike to meNow dwells, but hither often strayHer thoughts sent usward by the powerThat lives anew the life she lovedWhen thou her glorious goddess proved,—Thy songs her joy at every hour.You were her sun, now set too soon;Among the Lydian dames she shinesAs, after sunset, glow the linesOf light the rosy-fingered moonThrows on her retinue of starsSpreading a far-flung lane of beamsThat gleams the salt sea o’er and streamsAcross the rocky shore that barsIn vain the light that floods its gloom,And leaping landward bathes the fieldsWhere many a flower its beauty yieldsWith fragrant variegated bloom.Full fair the dew springs forth and holdsThe light, the roses lift their heads,The dainty anthryscs quit their beds,The clover, honey-rich, unfolds.Through all this beauty, hard unrestAnd longing crushing like a stoneHer tender heart, ofttimes atoneShe wanders with a weighted breast.She cannot calm her quivering lipAnd through the balmy, scented darkShe cries aloud we must embarkAnd thither come on some swift ship.Full clear her words to thee and me,For night with all her many earsTheir ardent sound full gladly hearsAnd sends us o’er the severing sea.(D. M. R.)
SAPPHO’S GIRL FRIEND ACROSS THE SEA
Atthis, in Sardis far awayAnactoria dear to theeAnd dear indeed alike to meNow dwells, but hither often strayHer thoughts sent usward by the powerThat lives anew the life she lovedWhen thou her glorious goddess proved,—Thy songs her joy at every hour.You were her sun, now set too soon;Among the Lydian dames she shinesAs, after sunset, glow the linesOf light the rosy-fingered moonThrows on her retinue of starsSpreading a far-flung lane of beamsThat gleams the salt sea o’er and streamsAcross the rocky shore that barsIn vain the light that floods its gloom,And leaping landward bathes the fieldsWhere many a flower its beauty yieldsWith fragrant variegated bloom.Full fair the dew springs forth and holdsThe light, the roses lift their heads,The dainty anthryscs quit their beds,The clover, honey-rich, unfolds.Through all this beauty, hard unrestAnd longing crushing like a stoneHer tender heart, ofttimes atoneShe wanders with a weighted breast.She cannot calm her quivering lipAnd through the balmy, scented darkShe cries aloud we must embarkAnd thither come on some swift ship.Full clear her words to thee and me,For night with all her many earsTheir ardent sound full gladly hearsAnd sends us o’er the severing sea.(D. M. R.)
Atthis, in Sardis far awayAnactoria dear to theeAnd dear indeed alike to meNow dwells, but hither often stray
Atthis, in Sardis far away
Anactoria dear to thee
And dear indeed alike to me
Now dwells, but hither often stray
Her thoughts sent usward by the powerThat lives anew the life she lovedWhen thou her glorious goddess proved,—Thy songs her joy at every hour.
Her thoughts sent usward by the power
That lives anew the life she loved
When thou her glorious goddess proved,—
Thy songs her joy at every hour.
You were her sun, now set too soon;Among the Lydian dames she shinesAs, after sunset, glow the linesOf light the rosy-fingered moon
You were her sun, now set too soon;
Among the Lydian dames she shines
As, after sunset, glow the lines
Of light the rosy-fingered moon
Throws on her retinue of starsSpreading a far-flung lane of beamsThat gleams the salt sea o’er and streamsAcross the rocky shore that bars
Throws on her retinue of stars
Spreading a far-flung lane of beams
That gleams the salt sea o’er and streams
Across the rocky shore that bars
In vain the light that floods its gloom,And leaping landward bathes the fieldsWhere many a flower its beauty yieldsWith fragrant variegated bloom.
In vain the light that floods its gloom,
And leaping landward bathes the fields
Where many a flower its beauty yields
With fragrant variegated bloom.
Full fair the dew springs forth and holdsThe light, the roses lift their heads,The dainty anthryscs quit their beds,The clover, honey-rich, unfolds.
Full fair the dew springs forth and holds
The light, the roses lift their heads,
The dainty anthryscs quit their beds,
The clover, honey-rich, unfolds.
Through all this beauty, hard unrestAnd longing crushing like a stoneHer tender heart, ofttimes atoneShe wanders with a weighted breast.
Through all this beauty, hard unrest
And longing crushing like a stone
Her tender heart, ofttimes atone
She wanders with a weighted breast.
She cannot calm her quivering lipAnd through the balmy, scented darkShe cries aloud we must embarkAnd thither come on some swift ship.
She cannot calm her quivering lip
And through the balmy, scented dark
She cries aloud we must embark
And thither come on some swift ship.
Full clear her words to thee and me,For night with all her many earsTheir ardent sound full gladly hearsAnd sends us o’er the severing sea.
Full clear her words to thee and me,
For night with all her many ears
Their ardent sound full gladly hears
And sends us o’er the severing sea.
(D. M. R.)
This ode alone marks Sappho as a great poetess. The reasons are: (1) the loving notice of little and common flowers, (2) the comparison of Anactoria when surrounded by other women to the moon in the midst of her surrounding stars, the bold personification of the moon secured by the use of the single figure “rosy-fingered,” (3) sudden and masterful survey of land and sea, (4) the successful centering of attention upon Anactoria’s homesickness even in the midst of such far-reaching beauty of land and sea, (5) the remarkably forceful portrayal of what in our day we call thought-transference asseen, for example, in Tennyson’sAylmer’s FieldorEnoch Arden, (6) and not least important, the simplicity and sharpness of outline displayed in the imagery. “Night” is a vague, widely diffused, mystic thing, but Sappho makes us see her a thing of many ears and one of them close to Anactoria’s face. Night does not send a mystic intimation such as Tennyson’s vibration of light might indicate. But she speaks right out in a clear voice that carries far enough to reach across the sea to Sappho. A seventh reason is the strange, hot emotion of love and sorrow and longing that throbs like a pulse in every line and makes the whole letter a living creature. Milton said and lovers of poetry have always agreed that poetry must be simple, sensuous, and passionate. By sensuous he of course meant expressed in images involving the use of the bodily senses. Is there anything in poetry, ancient or modern, that more exactly meets Milton’s requirements than these few lines of Sappho’s letter to her girl friend? Now if this is evident to the reader of an English translation, it is vastly more so to one who knowing the meaning of the words has read them in the Greek and then read them again because they were so sweet, and read them a third timeand many times until the music haunts him like the face of a lover. This will rank with Matthew Arnold’s versesTo Margueritein no. 5 of his series of little poems onSwitzerland:
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown...Now round us spreads the watery plain—Oh might our marges meet again!Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?A God, a God their severance ruled!And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown...Now round us spreads the watery plain—Oh might our marges meet again!Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?A God, a God their severance ruled!And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown...Now round us spreads the watery plain—Oh might our marges meet again!
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown
...
Now round us spreads the watery plain—
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?A God, a God their severance ruled!And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Who order’d that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Sappho’s last verse also reminds us of Horace’sOceano dissociabili91and Tennyson’s “bond-breaking sea.” Fragment E. 41 refers to the mariner at sea in a storm; and E. 66 pictures a beautiful scene on the sea, where “Hector and his comrades bring from sacred Thebe and everflowing Placia, by ship upon the briny sea, the dainty Andromache of the glancing eye.” (Edmonds)
Sappho’s verses are full of color, of bright and beautiful things. She ranks with Pindar in her special devotion to gold, not for its value butfor its fine amber lustre and its permanency (E. 110). The Cyprian queen of love sits on a throne of rich color and splendor, with inlaid wood or metal (E. 1); she “dispenses the nectar of love in beakers of gold” in what was perhaps the introductory poem of Sappho’s Wedding-Songs (E. 6):
Come thou, foam-born Kypris, and pour in daintyCups of amber gold thy delicate nectarSubtly mixed with fire that will swiftly kindleLove in our bosoms.(O’Hara’sLove’s Banquet)
Come thou, foam-born Kypris, and pour in daintyCups of amber gold thy delicate nectarSubtly mixed with fire that will swiftly kindleLove in our bosoms.(O’Hara’sLove’s Banquet)
Come thou, foam-born Kypris, and pour in dainty
Cups of amber gold thy delicate nectar
Subtly mixed with fire that will swiftly kindle
Love in our bosoms.
(O’Hara’sLove’s Banquet)
Aphrodite wears a golden coronal (E. 9), is herself golden (E. 157), and her handmaid is golden-shining (E. 24). The Muses are golden (E. 11), perhaps also the Nereids (E. 36). They have a golden house (E. 129):
Hither now, O Muses, leaving the goldenHouse of God, unseen in the azure spaces.(O’Hara’sMuses)
Hither now, O Muses, leaving the goldenHouse of God, unseen in the azure spaces.(O’Hara’sMuses)
Hither now, O Muses, leaving the golden
House of God, unseen in the azure spaces.
(O’Hara’sMuses)
The dawn is golden-slippered (E. 19); something or somebody is more golden than gold (E. 60). “Gold is pure of rust” (E. 109); “Gold is a child of Zeus; no moth nor worm devours it; and it overcomes the strongest of mortal hearts”(E. 110).92Sappho’s daughter Cleïs looks like a golden flower (E. 130); “Golden pulse grew on the shore” (E. 139, cf. O’Hara’s poemGolden Pulse). One of many fragments of interest to the student of Greek life and antiquities speaks of “gold-knuckle bowls” (E. 191).93Sappho was cited by Menaechmus of Sicyon in hisTreatise on Artistsas the first to use a lyre called thepectis, and she invented the Mixo-Lydian mode, particularly sensual or emotional, which the Greek tragedians copied from her.
Sappho makes allusions to children which are natural and tender (E. 130). In similes she uses children simply and directly as inThe Ode to Hesperus(E. 149) and in the verse, which may refer to a sparrow and which Catullus imitated, “I flutter like a child after her mother” (E. 142).
Sappho from her tender years was inured to the sorrows as well as the joys of love. Two of her fragments (E. 111, 135), the first perhaps a complete poem, represent the loneliness of a long night spent in vain waiting for a lover. Cipollini (1890) and others have often set these to music. They are popular ballads which Sappho must have used just as Burns did in writingAuld Lang Syne. As Tucker says: “Itis probable that she is setting one such prehistoric lyrical idea to new words or recasting one such vagrom ditty.” He is thinking, I imagine, of such a Scottish ballad as:
Yestreen I made my bed fu’ bradeThe night I’ll make it narrow:For a’ the livelong winter’s nightI’ll lie twin’d of my marrow.
Yestreen I made my bed fu’ bradeThe night I’ll make it narrow:For a’ the livelong winter’s nightI’ll lie twin’d of my marrow.
Yestreen I made my bed fu’ brade
The night I’ll make it narrow:
For a’ the livelong winter’s night
I’ll lie twin’d of my marrow.
There are a score of versions in Italian, some far from Sappho, and Ronsard’s good French version; and many an American or English poet has tried his hand at translating the lines,94which in the Greek toll like a curfew bell. All too little known is the rendering by Alan Seeger, the poet who was killed in battle on July 4, 1916, in his poem,Do You Remember Once?
Under the western-seasThe pale moon settles and the Pleiades.The firelight sinks: outside the night-winds moan—The hour advances, and I sleep alone.
Under the western-seasThe pale moon settles and the Pleiades.The firelight sinks: outside the night-winds moan—The hour advances, and I sleep alone.
Under the western-seas
The pale moon settles and the Pleiades.
The firelight sinks: outside the night-winds moan—
The hour advances, and I sleep alone.
For the Greek silence of nature Seeger substitutes the sympathy of nature in the moaning of the night winds. A more literal translation is:
Sunk is the moonThe Pleiades are set;Tis midnight; soonThe hour is past: and yetI lie alone—(Tucker)
Sunk is the moonThe Pleiades are set;Tis midnight; soonThe hour is past: and yetI lie alone—(Tucker)
Sunk is the moon
The Pleiades are set;
Tis midnight; soon
The hour is past: and yet
I lie alone—
(Tucker)
Sappho’s verses are purer, simpler than the frank poem of Hester Bancroft on anAugust Night:95
God, the night will never endAnd I, alone discordant and forlorn,Unmated, on this love-night of the year!
God, the night will never endAnd I, alone discordant and forlorn,Unmated, on this love-night of the year!
God, the night will never end
And I, alone discordant and forlorn,
Unmated, on this love-night of the year!
The other popular song about a girl in love, in a metre which Horace imitated in the twelfth ode of the third book, is as imaginative a description as anything in Coleridge or Keats with whom the Maryland poet, Father Tabb, so aptly compares Sappho. It reminds one of Gretchen’s weaving-song inFaust, and of the English folk-song, “O mother, put my wheel away; I cannot spin to-night.” It is beautifully translated by Thomas Moore, in hisEvenings in Greece: