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diff --git a/old/42543-8.txt b/old/42543-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4ffc497..0000000 --- a/old/42543-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1462 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sappho, by Sappho and Henry de Vere Stacpoole - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Sappho - A New Rendering - -Author: Sappho - Henry de Vere Stacpoole - -Release Date: April 15, 2013 [EBook #42543] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - - - - -Produced by Heather Strickland & Marc D'Hooghe at -http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made -available by the Internet Archive - University of -Toronto-Robarts) - - - - - -SAPPHO - -A New Rendering - -BY - -H. DE VERE STACPOOLE - -LONDON - -HUTCHINSON AND CO. - -PATERNOSTER ROW - - - - -SAPPHO - - -I - -Sappho lies remote from us, beyond the fashions and the ages, beyond -sight, almost beyond the wing of Thought, in the world's extremest -youth. - -To thrill the imagination with the vast measure of time between the -world of Sappho and the world of the Great War, it is quite useless to -express it in years, one must express it in æons, just as astronomers, -dealing with sidereal distances, think, not in miles, but in light -years. - -Between us and Sappho lie the Roman Empire and the age of Christ, and -beyond the cross the age of Athenian culture, culminating in the white -flower of the Acropolis. - -Had she travelled she might have visited Nineveh before its destruction -by Cyaxares, or watched the Phoenicians set sail on their African -voyage at the command of Nechos. She might have spoken with Draco and -Jeremiah the Prophet and the father of Gautama the founder of Buddhism. -For her the Historical Past, which is the background of all thought, -held little. but echoes, voices, and the forms of gods, and the -immediate present little but Lesbos and the Ægean Sea, whose waters had -been broken by the first trireme only a hundred and fifty years before -her birth. - -II - -Men call her the greatest lyric poet that the world has known, basing -their judgment on the few perfect fragments that remain of her song. But -her voice is more than the voice of a lyric poet, it is the voice of a -world that has been, of a freshness and beauty that will never be again, -and to give that voice a last touch of charm remains the fact that it -comes to us as an echo. - -For of Sappho's poetry not a single vestige remains that does not come -to us reflected in the form of a quotation from the works of some -admirer, some one captured by her beauty or her wisdom or the splendour -of her verse, or some one, like Herodian or Apollonius the sophist of -Alexandria, who takes it to exhibit the æolic use of words or -accentuation, or Hephæstion, to give an example of her choriambic -tetrameters. - -Only one complete poem comes to us, the Hymn to Aphrodite quoted by -Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and one almost complete, the Ode to -Anactoria, quoted by Longinus; all other quotations are fragments: a few -lines, a few words, a word, the merest traces. - -What fate gave us the shipping lists of Homer, yet denied us Sappho; -preserved the _Lexicon Græcum lliadis et Odysseæ_ of Apollonius, yet cut -the song to Anactoria short, and reduced the song of the orchard to -three lines? or decided that Sophists and Grammarians, exhibiting -dry-as-dust truths, should be a medium between her and us? - -Some say that her works were burned at Constantinople, or at Rome, by -the Christians, and what we know of the early Christians lends colour -to the statement. Some that they were burned by the Byzantine emperors -and the poems of Gregory Nazianzen circulated in their place. - - * * * * * - -But whatever the fate it failed in its evil intention. Sappho remains, -eternal as Sirius, and it is doubtful if her charm and her hold upon the -world would have been strengthened by the full preservation of her work. - -As it is, added to the longing which all great art inspires, we have the -longing inspired by suggestion. That lovely figure belonging to the feet -she shows us "crossed by a broidered strap of Lydian work," would it -have been as beautiful unveiled as imagined? Did she long for -maidenhood? Why did the swallow trouble her, and what did the daughter -of Cyprus say to her in a dream? - -There is not a fragment of Sappho that is not surrounded in the mind of -the reader by the rainbow of suggestion. Just as the gods draped the -human form to give desire imagination, so, perhaps, some god and no fate -has all but hidden the mind of Sappho. - - -III - -Looking at it in another way one might fancy that all the demons of -malignity and destruction had conspired to destroy and traduce: to -destroy the works and traduce the character of the poet. - -The game of defamation was begun in Athens in the age of corruption by -lepers, and carried on through the succeeding ages by their kind, till -Welcker came with his torch and showed these gibbering ghosts standing -on nothing and with nothing in their hands. - -Colonel Mure tried to put Welcker's torch out, and only burned his -fingers. Comparetti snuffed it, only to make it burn the brighter. But -bright or dim, the torch was only intended to show the lepers. Sappho -shines by her own light in the minutest fragments of her that -remain--Fragments whose deathless energy, like the energy of radium, has -vivified literature in all ages and times. - - -IV - -The mind of Sappho runs through all literature like a spangled thread. - - - -THE HYMN TO APHRODITE AND FIFTY-TWO FRAGMENTS, - -TOGETHER WITH SAPPHO TO PHAON, - -OVID'S HEROIC EPISTLE XV - - - - -FOREWORD - - -Tear the red rose to pieces if you will, -The soul that is the rose you may not kill; -Destroy the page, you may, but not the words -That share eternal life with flowers and birds. - -And the least words of Sappho--let them fall, -Cast where you will, some bird will rise and call, -Some flower unfold in some forsaken spot. -Hill hyacinth, or blue forget-me-not. - - - -CONTENTS - -INTRODUCTION -FOREWORD - - I. HYMN TO APHRODITE - II. ODE TO ANACTORIA - III. WHERE BLOOMS THE MYRTLE - IV. I LOVED THEE - V. INVOCATION - VI. CLAÏS - VII. TO A SWALLOW - VIII. LOVE - IX. WEDDING SONG - X. EVENING - XI. MAIDENHOOD - XII. MOONLIGHT - XIII. ORCHARD SONG - XIV. DICA - XV. GRACE - XVI. AS ON THE HILLS - XVII. TO ATTHIS - XVIII. AS WIND UPON THE MOUNTAIN OAKS - XIX. GOODNESS. - XX. THE FISHERMAN'S TOMB - XXI. TIMAS - XXII. DEAD SHALT THOU LIE - XXIII. DEATH - XXIV. ALCÆUS AND SAPPHO - XXV. THE ALTAR - XXVI. THE ALTAR - XXVII. LOVE - XXVIII. LIKE THE SWEET APPLE - XXIX. PROPHESY - XXX. FOR THEE - XXXI. FRIEND - XXXII. THE MOON HAS SET - XXXIII. THE SKY - XXXIV. TO HER LYRE - XXXV. NEVER ON ANY MAIDEN - XXXVI. * * * - XXXVII. ANGER - XXXVIII. ADONIS - XXXIX. LEDA - XL. THE CAPTIVE - XLI. INVOCATION - XLII. YOUTH AND AGE - XLIII. FRAGMENT - XLIV. THE LESBIAN SINGER. - XLV. ON THE TOMB OF A PRIESTES OF ARTEMIS - XLVI. TO A BRIDE - XLVII. HERMES - XLVIII. ADONIS - XLIX. SLEEP - L. THY FORM IS LOVELY - LI. THE BRIDEGROOM - LII. REGRET - LIII. FRAGMENT - LIV. SAPPHO TO PHAON - - - - I - - HYMN TO APHRODITE - - Daughter of Zeus and Immortal, - Aphrodite, serene - Weaver of spells, at thy portal - Hear me and slay not, O Queen! - - As in the past, hither to me - From thy far palace of gold, - Drawn by the doves that o'erflew me, - Come, as thou earnest of old. - - Swiftly thy flock bore thee hither, - Smiling, as turned I to thee, - Spoke thou across the blue weather, - "Sappho, why callest thou me?" - - "Sappho, what Beauty disdains thee, - Sappho, who wrongest thine heart, - Sappho, what evil now pains thee, - Whence sped the dart? - - "Flies from thee, soon she shall follow, - Turns from thee, soon she shall love, - Seeking thee swift as the swallow, - Ingrate though now she may prove." - - Come, once again to release me, - Join with my fire thy fire, - Freed from the torments that seize me, - Give me, O Queen! my desire! - - - - II - - ODE TO ANACTORIA - - That man, whoever he may be, - Who sits awhile to gaze on thee, - Hearing thy lovely laugh, thy speech, - Throned with the gods he seems to me; - For when a moment to mine eyes - Thy form discloses, silently - I stand consumed with fires that rise - Like flames around a sacrifice. - Sight have I none, bells out of tune - Ring in mine ears, my tongue lies dumb; - Paler than grass in later June, - Yet daring all - (To thee I come). - - - - III - - WHERE BLOOMS THE MYRTLE - - O Muse, upon thy golden throne, - Far in the azure, fair, alone. - Sing what the Teian sweetly sang,-- - The Teian sage whose lineage sprang - Where blooms the myrtle in the gay - Land of fair women far away. - - - - IV - - I LOVED THEE - - I loved thee, Atthis, once, - once long ago. - - - - V - - INVOCATION - - Goddess of Cyprus come (where beauty lights - The way) and serve in cups of gold these lips - With nectar, mixed by love with all delights - Of golden days, and dusk of amorous nights. - - - - VI - - CLAÏS - - I have a daughter, - Claïs fair, - Poised like a golden flower in air, - Lydian treasures her limbs outshine - (Claïs, beloved one, - Claïs mine!) - - - - VII - - TO A SWALLOW - - Pandion's daughter--O fair swallow, - Why dost thou weary me-- - (Where should I follow?) - - - - VIII - - LOVE - - Sweet mother, at the idle loom I lean, - Weary with longing for the boy that still - Remains a dream of loveliness--to fill - My soul, my life, at Aphrodite's will. - - - - IX - - WEDDING SONG - - Workmen lift high - The beams of the roof, - Hymenæus! - - Like Ares from sky - Comes the groom to the bride. - Hymenæus! - - Than men who must die - Stands he taller in pride, - Hymenaeus! - - - - X - - EVENING - - Children astray to their mothers, and goats to the herd, - Sheep to the shepherd, through twilight the wings of the bird, - All things that morning has scattered with fingers of gold, - All things thou bringest, O Evening! at last to the fold. - - - - XI - - MAIDENHOOD - - Maidenhood! Maidenhood! where hast thou gone from me. - Whither, O Slain! - - I shall return to thee, I who have gone from thee, never again. - - - - XII - - MOONLIGHT - - The stars around the fair moon fade - Against the night, - When gazing full she fills the glade - And spreads the seas with silvery light. - - - - XIII - - ORCHARD SONG - - Cool murmur of water through apple-wood - Troughs without number - The whole orchard fills, whilst the leaves - Lend their music to slumber. - - - - XIV - - DICA - - With flowers fair adorn thy lustrous hair, - Dica, amidst thy locks sweet blossoms twine, - With thy soft hands, for so a maiden stands - Accepted of the gods, whose eyes divine - Are turned away from her--though fair as May - She waits, but round whose locks no flowers shine. - - - - XV - - GRACE - - What country maiden charms thy heart, - However fair, however sweet, - Who has not learned by gracious Art - To draw her dress around her feet? - - - - XVI - - AS ON THE HILLS - - As on the hills the shepherds trample the hyacinth down, - Staining the earth with darkness, there where a flower has blown. - - - - XVII - - TO ATTHIS - - Hateful my face is to thee, - Hateful to thee beyond speaking, - Atthis, who fliest from me - Like a white bird Andromeda seeking. - - - - XVIII - - AS WIND UPON THE MOUNTAIN OAKS - - As wind upon the mountain oaks in storm, - So Eros shakes my soul, my life, my form. - - - - XIX - - GOODNESS - - He who is fair is good to look upon; - He who is good is fair, though youth be gone. - - - - XX - - THE FISHERMAN'S TOMB - - Over the fisher Pelagon Meniscus his father set - The oar worn by the wave, the trap, and the fishing net;-- - For all men, and for ever, memorials there to be - Of the luckless life of the fisher, the labourer of the sea. - - - - XXI - - TIMAS - - This is the dust of Tunas, who, unwed, - Passed hence to Proserpina's house of gloom. - In mourning all her sorrowing playmates shed - Their curls and cast the tribute on her tomb. - - - - XXII - - DEAD SHALT THOU LIE - - Dead shalt thou lie for ever, and forgotten, - For whom the flowers of song have never bloomed; - A wanderer amidst the unbegotten, - In Hades' house a shadow ay entombed. - - - - XXIII - - DEATH - - Death is an evil, for the gods choose breath; - Had Death been good the gods had chosen Death. - - - - XXIV - - ALCÆUS AND SAPPHO - - ALCÆUS - - Seet violet-weaving Sappho, whose soft smile - My tongue should free, - Lo, I would speak, but shame holds me the while - I gaze on thee. - - SAPPHO - - Hadst thou but felt desire of noble things, - Hadst not thy tongue proposed to speak no good, - Thy words had not been destitute of wings, - Nor shame thine eyes subdued. - - - - XXV - - THE ALTAR - - Then the full globed moon arose, and there - The women stood as round an altar fair. - - - - XXVI - - THE ALTAR - - And thus at times, in Crete, the women there - Circle in dance around the altar fair; - In measured movement, treading as they pass - With tender feet the soft bloom of the grass. - - - - XXVII - - LOVE - - All delicacy unto me is lovely, and for me, - O Love! - Thy wings are as the midday fire, - Thy splendour as the sun above. - - - - XXVIII - - LIKE THE SWEET APPLE - - Like the sweet apple that reddens - At end of the bough-- - Far end of the bough-- - Left by the gatherer's swaying, - Forgotten, so thou. - Nay, not forgotten, ungotten, - Ungathered (till now). - - - - XXIX - - PROPHESY - - Methinks hereafter in some later spring - Echo will bear to men the songs we sing. - - - - XXX - - FOR THEE - - For thee, unto the altar will I lead - A white goat-- - To the altar by the sea; - And there, where waves advance and waves recede, - A full libation will I pour for thee. - - - - XXXI - - FRIEND - - Friend, face me so and raise - Unto my face thy face, - Unto mine eyes thy gaze, - Unto my soul its grace. - - - - XXXII - - THE MOON HAS SET - - The moon has set beyond the seas, - And vanished are the Pleiades; - Half the long weary night has gone, - Time passes--yet I lie alone. - - - - XXXIII - - THE SKY - - I think not with these two - White arms to touch the blue. - - - - XXXIV - - TO HER LYRE - - Singing, O shell, divine! - Let now thy voice be mine. - - - - XXXV - - NEVER ON ANY MAIDEN - - Never on any maiden, the golden sun shall shine, - Never on any maiden whose wisdom matches thine. - - - - XXXVI - - * * * - - I spoke with Aphrodite in a dream. - - - - XXXVII - - ANGER - - When anger stirs thy breast, - Speak not at all - (For words, once spoken, rest - Beyond recall). - - - - XXXVIII - - ADONIS - - Ah for Adonis! - (Where the willows sigh - The call still comes - Through spring's sweet mystery.) - - - - XXXIX - - LEDA - - They say, 'neath leaf and blossom - Leda found in the gloom - An egg, white as her bosom, - Under an iris bloom. - - - - XL - - THE CAPTIVE - - Now Love has bound me, trembling, hands and feet, - O Love so fatal, Love so bitter-sweet. - - - - XLI - - INVOCATION - - Come to me, O ye graces, - Delicate, tender, fair; - Come from your heavenly places, - Muses with golden hair. - - - - XLII - - YOUTH AND AGE - - If love thou hast for me, not hate, - Arise and find a younger mate; - For I no longer will abide - Where youth and age lie side by side. - - - - XLIII - - FRAGMENT - - From heaven returning; - Red of hue, his chlamys burning - Against the blue. - - - - XLIV - - THE LESBIAN SINGER - - Upstanding, as the Lesbian singer stands - Above the singers of all other lands. - - - - XLV - - ON THE TOMB OF A PRIESTESS OF ARTEMIS - - Voiceless I speak, and from the tomb reply - Unto Æthopia, Leto's child, was I - Vowed by the daughter of Hermocleides, - Who was the son of Saonaiades. - O virgin queen, unto my prayer incline, - Bless him and cast thy blessing on our line. - - - - XLVI - - TO A BRIDE - - Bride, around whom the rosy loves are flying, - Sweet image of the Cyprian undying, - The bed awaits thee; go, and with him lying, - Give to the groom thy sweetness, softly sighing. - May Hesperus in gladness pass before thee, - And Hera of the silver throne bend o'er thee. - - - - XLVII - - HERMES - - Ambrosia there was mixed, and from his station - Hermes the bowl for waiting gods outpoured; - Then raised they all their cups and made oblation, - Blessing the bridegroom (by the bride adored). - - - - XLVIII - - ADONIS - - Tender Adonis stricken is lying. - What, Cytherea, now can we do? - Beat your breasts, maidens, Adonis is dying, - Rending your garments (the white fragments strew). - - - - XLIX - - SLEEP - - With eyes of darkness, - The sleep of night. - - - - L - - THY FORM IS LOVELY - - Thy form is lovely and thine eyes are honeyed, - O'er thy face the pale - Clear light of love lies like a veil. - Bidding thee rise, - With outstretched hands, - Before thee Aphrodite stands. - - - - LI - - THE BRIDEGROOM - - Joy born of marriage thou provest, - Bridegroom thrice blest, - Holding the maiden thou lovest - Clasped to thy breast. - - - - LII - - REGRET - - Those unto whom I have given, - These have my heart most riven. - - - - LIII - - FRAGMENT - - Upon thy girl friend's white and tender breast, - Sleep thou, and on her bosom find thy rest. - - - - LIV - - SAPPHO TO PHAON - - A NEW RENDERING OF OVID'S HEROIC EPISTLE, XV. - - - I - - Phaon, most lovely, closest to my heart, - Can your dear eyes forget, or must I stand - Confessed in name, beloved that thou art, - Lost to my touch and in another land. - Sappho now calls thee, lyre and Lyric Muse - Forgotten, and the tears born of her wrongs - Blinding her eyes, upturned but to refuse - Phoebus, the fountain of all joyous songs. - - I burn, as when in swiftness, past the byres, - Flame takes the corn, borne by the winds that blow; - For what are Ætna's flames to my desires, - Thou, who by Ætna wanderest, O Thou! - The Lyric Muse has turned, as I from her, - Peace, Peace alone can join us once again, - The blue sea in its solitude lies fair, - But, desolate, I turn from it in pain. - No more the girls of Lesbos move my heart, - My blameless love for them is now no more, - Before my love for thee all loves depart, - Cold wanderer thou upon a distant shore. - - O thou art lovely! wert thou garbed like him, - Apollo by thy side a shade would be. - Garland thy tresses with the ivy dim - And Bacchus would be less himself, by thee. - Apollo, yet, who bent, as Bacchus fell, - One to the Cretan, one to Daphne's fire, - Beside me, what are they? I cast my spell - O'er seas and lands, the music of my lyre - Echoes across the world where mortals dwell, - Renders the earth in tune with my desire. - - Alcæus strikes Olympus with his song, - Boldly and wild his music finds its star. - Unto the human does my voice belong - And Aphrodite smiles on me from far. - Have I no charms? has genius lost her touch - To turn simplicity to beauty's zone? - Am I so small, whose towering height is such - That in the world of men I stand alone? - - Yea, I am brown--an Æthiopian's face - Turned Perseus from his path, a flame of fire. - White doves or dark, which hath the finer grace? - Are they not equal, netted by desire? - - If by no charm except thine own sweet charm - Thou can'st be moved, ah then, alas, for me! - Fires of the earth thy coldness will not warm, - And Phaon's self must Phaon's lover be. - - Yet once, ah once! forgetful of the world, - You lay engirdled by this world of mine, - Those nights remain, be earth to darkness hurled, - Deathless, as passion's ecstasy divine. - My songs around you were the only birds, - My voice the only music, in your fire - With kisses, burning yet, you killed my words - And found my kisses sweeter than desire. - I filled you with delight, when close embraced; - In the last act of love I gave you heaven, - And yet again, delirious as we faced, - And yet again, till in exhaustion, even - Love's self half died and nothing more remained, - But earth and life half lost, and heaven gained. - - And now, Sicilian girls--O heart of mine, - Why was I born so far from Sicily?-- - Sicilian girls, unto my words incline, - Beware of smiles, of insincerity, - Beware the words that once belonged to me, - The fruits of passion and the seeds of grief; - O Cyprian by the fair Sicilian sea, - Sappho now calls thee, turn to her relief! - - Shall Fortune still pursue me, luckless one, - With hounds of woe pursue me down the years? - Sorrow was mine since first I saw the sun, - The ashes of my parents knew my tears. - My brother cast the gifts of life away - For one unworthy of all gifts but gold, - Grief follows grief and on this woeful day - An infant daughter in my arms I hold. - - Fates! What more can ye do, what more essay? - Phaon! ah yes, he is the last, I know. - The first, the all, the grave that once was gay, - The dark veil o'er my purple robe ye throw, - My curls no more are curls, nor scent the air - With perfume from the flowers Egyptians grow, - The gold that bound these locks of mine so fair - Has parted for the wind these locks to blow. - All arts of love were mine when he was by, - Whose sun is now the sun of Sicily. - - Phaon! when I was born, the mystic three - Called Aphrodite on my birth to gaze, - And then the Cyprian, turning, called on thee - To be my fate and fill my dreams and days. - Thou for whose sake Aurora's eyes might turn - From Cephalus, or Cynthia give thee sleep, - Pouring oblivion from night's marble urn, - Bidding Endymion to watch thy sheep! - - --Lo! as I write I weep, and nought appears - But Love, half veiled by broken words and tears. - - You! you! who left me without kiss or tear - Or word, to murmur softly like a child - Begotten of thy voice, deception were - Less cruel far than silence, you who smiled - Falsely so often, had you no false phrase-- - You who so often had false tales to tell-- - No voice there, at the parting of our ways, - To say "Farewell, O Love!" or just "Farewell"! - - I had no gift to give you when you passed, - And wrongs were all the gifts received from thee, - I had no words to tell you at the last - But these: "Forgo not life, forget not me." - And when I heard, told by some casual tongue, - That thou wert gone, Grief turned me then to stone, - Voiceless I stood as though I ne'er had sung, - Pulseless and lost, for ever more alone. - Without a sigh, without a tear to shed, - Grief held me, Grief who has no word to say. - - Then, rising as one rises from the dead, - My soul broke forth as one breaks forth to slay. - Rending and wounding all this frame of mine, - Cursing the Gods, the moments and the years, - Now like the clouds of storm, where lightnings shine, - Uplifted, then resolving into tears. - Debased, when turns my brother in his scorn - My grief to laughter, pointing to my child; - Till madness takes me as the fire the corn - And, in reviling thee, I stand reviled. - Ah! but at night, At night I turn to thee. - In dreams our limbs are joined, as flame with flame, - In dreams again your arms are girdling me, - I taste your soul in joys I blush to name. - - Ah! but the day that follows on the night, - The emptiness that drives me to the plain - To seek those spots that knew my lost delight, - The grotto that shall shield us not again. - - Here lies the grass we pressed in deeds of love, - Lips, limbs entwined--I kiss the ground to-day. - The herbs lie withered, and the birds that move - Are songless, and the very trees are grey. - Night takes the day and falls upon the groves, - The nightingale alone is left to cry, - Lamenting, in the song that sorrow loves, - To Tereus she calls, to Phaon, I. - - - - II - - There is a spring, through whose cool water shows - The sand like silver, clear as seen through air. - There is a spring, above whose mirror grows - A lotus like a grove in flower fair. - Here, as I lay in tears, a spirit stood - Born of the water, then she called to me, - Sappho, pursuing Love, by Grief pursued, - Sappho, beside the blue Leucadian sea - There stands a rock, and there above the caves, - Whose wandering echoes reach Apollo's fane, - Down leaping to the blue and breaking waves, - Lovers find sleep, nor dream of love again. - Deucalion here found ease from Pyrrah's scorn, - Sappho arise, and where the sharp cliffs fall, - Thy body, that had better not been born, - Cast to the waves, the blue, blue waves that call. - I rise, and weeping silently, I go. - My fear is great, my love is greater still. - Better oblivion than the love I know, - Kinder than Phaon's is the blue wave's will. - - Ye favouring breezes, guard me on this day, - Love, lend your pinions, waft me o'er the sea - Where, lovely Phoebus, on thy shrine I'll lay - My lyre, with this inscription unto thee: - "Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre, - Unto the God the gift, the fire to fire." - - - - III - - Alas! and woe is me. - But must I go? - O Phaon, Phoebus' self to me is less - Than Phaon--will you cast me down below - All broken, for the cruel rocks to press - - This breast, that loved thee, ruined?--Ah! the song - Born of the Muses leaves me and the lyre - Is voiceless--they no more to me belong, - And in this darkness dies the heavenly fire. - - Farewell, ye girls of Lesbos, fare ye well; - No more the groves shall answer to my song, - No more these hands shall wake the lyre to tell - Of Love, of Life--to Phaon they belong, - And he has fled. - O Loveliness, return, - Make once again my soul to sing in joy, - Feed once again this heart with fires that burn, - Gods! can no prayers avail but to destroy, - - No songs bring back the lost, no sighs recall - The lost that was my love, my life, my all? - - Return! Return! Raise to the wind thy sail, - Across the sea bring back to me the years, - Eros shall lend to thee the favouring gale, - The track is sure where Aphrodite steers. - Let thy white sail be lifted on the rim - Of sky that marks the dark dividing seas. - Failing that far-off sail, remain the dim - Blue depths where once Deucalion found release. - Failing that far-off sail, the waves shall give - Death, or Forgetfulness, whilst still I live. - - -THE END - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Sappho, by Sappho and Henry de Vere Stacpoole - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - -***** This file should be named 42543-8.txt or 42543-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/5/4/42543/ - -Produced by Heather Strickland & Marc D'Hooghe at -http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made -available by the Internet Archive - University of -Toronto-Robarts) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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