Public-domain ebook
by Sappho
Language: en414 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·Classics of Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #42543.
The opening · free to read
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.
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.
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.
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!
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).
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.
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.
I have a daughter, Claïs fair, Poised like a golden flower in air, Lydian treasures her limbs outshine (Claïs, beloved one, Claïs mine!)
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.
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