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 Phœbus, on thy shrine I'll lay
My lyre, with this inscription unto thee:
"Sappho to Phœbus consecrates her lyre,
Unto the God the gift, the fire to fire."



III

Alas! and woe is me.
But must I go?
O Phaon, Phœbus' 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