Tell me, when you looked upon the characters from my eager right hand, did your eye know forthwith whose they were—or, unless you had read their author’s name, Sappho, would you fail to know whence these brief words come?
Perhaps, too, you may ask why my verses alternate, when I am better suited to the lyric mode. I must weep, for my love—and elegy is the weeping strain; no lyre is suited to my tears.
I burn—as burns the fruitful acre when its harvests are ablaze, with untamed cast-winds driving on the flame. The fields you frequent, O Phaon, lie far away, by Typhoean Aetna; and I—heat not less than the fires of Aetna preys on me. Nor can I fashion aught of song to suit the well-ordered string; songs are the labour- of minds care-free! Neither the maids of Pyrrha charm me now, nor they of Methymna, nor all the rest of the throng of Lesbian daughters. Naught is Anactorie to me, naught Cydro, the dazzling fair; my eyes joy not in Atthis as once they did, nor in the hundred other maids I loved here to my reproach; unworthy one, the love that belonged to many maids you alone possess.
You have beauty, and your years are apt for life’s delights—O beauty that lay in ambush for my eyes! Take up the lyre and quiver—you will be Apollo manifest; let horns but spring on your head—you will be Bacchus! Phoebus loved Daphne, and Bacchus, too, loved the Gnosian maid, and neither one nor other knew the lyric mode; yet for me the daughters of Pegasus dictate sweetest songs; my name is already sung abroad in all the earth. Not greater is the praise Alcaeus wins, the sharer in my homeland and in my gift of song, though a statelier strain he sounds. If nature, malign to me, has denied the charm of beauty, weigh in the stead of beauty the genius she gave. I am slight of stature, yet I have a name fills every land; the measure of my name is my real height. If I am not dazzling fair, Cepheus’ Andromeda was fair in Perseus’ eyes, though dusky with the hue of her native land. Besides, white pigeons oft are mated with those of different hue, and the black turtle-dove, too, is loved by the bird of green. If none shall be yours unless deemed worthy of you for her beauty’s sake, then none shall be yours at all.
Yet, when I read you my songs, I seemed already beautiful enough; you swore ’twas I alone whom speech forever graced. I would sing to you, I remember—for lovers remember all—and while I sang you stole kisses from me. My kisses too you praised, and I pleased in every way—but then above all when we wrought at the task of love. Then did my playful ways delight you more than your wont—the quick embrace, the jest that gave spice to our sport, and, when the joys of both had mingled into one, the deep, deep languor in our wearied frames.
Now new prey is yours—the maids of Sicily. What is Lesbos now to me? I would I were a Sicilian maid. Ah, send me back my wanderer, ye Nisaean matrons and Nisaean maids, nor let the lies of his bland tongue deceive you! What he says to you, he had said before to me. Thou too, Erycina, who dost frequent the Sicanian mountains—for I am thine—protect thy singer, O lady! Can it be my grievous fortune will hold the ways it first began, and ever remain bitter in its course? Six natal days had passed for me, when I gathered the bones of my father, dead before his time, and let them drink my tears. My untaught brother was caught in the flame of harlot love, and suffered loss together with foul shame; reduced to need, he roams the dark blue seas with agile oar, and the wealth he cast away by evil means once more by evil means he seeks. As for me, because I often warned him well and faithfully, he hates me; this has my candour brought me, this my duteous tongue. And as if there were lack of things to weary me endlessly, a little daughter fills the measure of my cares.
Last cause of all are you for my complaint. My craft is not impelled by a propitious gale. Lo, see, my hair lies scattered in disorder about my neck, my fingers are laden with no sparkling gems; I am clad in garment mean, no gold is in the strands of my hair, my locks are scented with no gifts of Araby. For whom should I adorn myself, or whom should I strive to please? He, the one cause for my adornment, is gone. Tender is my heart, and easily pierced by the light shaft, and there is ever cause why I should ever love—whether at my birth the Sisters declared this law and did not spin my thread of life with austere strand, or whether tastes change into character, and Thalia, mistress of my art, is making my nature soft. What wonder if the age of first down has carried me away, and the years that stir men’s love? Lest thou steal him in Cephalus’ place, I ever feared, Aurora—and so thou wouldst do, but that thy first prey holds thee still. Him should Phoebe behold, who beholds all things, ’twill be Phaon she bids continue in his sleep; him Venus would have carried to the skies in her ivory car, but that she knows he might charm even her Mars. O neither yet man nor still boy—meet age for charm—O ornament and great glory of thy time, O hither come; sail back again, O beauteous one, to my embrace! I do not plead for thee to love, but to let thyself be loved.
I write, and my eyes let fall the springing tears like drops of dew; look, how many a blot obscures this place! If you were so resolved to leave my side, you could have gone in more becoming wise. You might at least have said to me: “O Lesbian mistress, fare you well!” You did not take with you my tears, you did not take my kisses; indeed, I felt no fear of the Pangs I was to suffer. You have left me nothing, nothing except my wrong; and you—you have no token of my love to put you in mind of me. I gave you no behests—nor Would I have given any, save not to be unmindful of me. O by our love—and may it never far depart!—and by the heavenly Nine who are my deities, I swear to you, when someone said to me: “Your joys are flying from you!” for a long time I could not weep, and could not speak! Tears failed my eyes, and words my tongue; my breast was fast frozen with icy chill. After my grief had found itself, I felt no shame to beat my breast, and rend my hair, and shriek, not otherwise than when the loving mother of a son whom death has taken bears to the high-built funeral pile his empty frame. Joy swells my brother Charaxus’ heart as he sees my woe; he passes before my eyes, and passes again; and, purposing to make the cause of my grief appear immodest, he says: “Why does she grieve? Surely her daughter lives!” Modesty and love are not at one. There was no one did not see me; yet I rent my robe and laid bare my breast.
You, Phaon, are my care; you, my dreams bring back to me—dreams brighter than the beauteous day. In them I find you, though in space you are far away; but not long enough are the joys that slumber gives. Often I seem with the burden of my neck to press your arms, often to place beneath your neck my arms. I recognize the kisses—close caresses of the tongue—which you were wont to take and wont to give. At times I fondle you, and utter words that seem almost the waking truth, and my lips keep vigil for my senses. Further I blush to tell, but all takes place; I feel the delight, and cannot rule myself.
But when Titan shows his face and lights up all the earth, I complain that sleep has deserted me so soon; I make for the grots and the wood, as if the wood and the grots could aid me—those haunts were in the secret of my joys. Thither in frenzied mood I course, like one whom the maddening Enyo has touched, with hair flying loose about my neck. My eyes behold the grots, hanging with rugged rock—grots that to me were like Mygdonian marble; I find the forest out which oft afforded us a couch to lie upon, and covered us with thick shade from many leaves—but I find not the lord both of the forest and myself. The place is but cheap ground; he was the dower that made it rich. I have recognised the pressed-down grass of the turf I knew so well; the sod was hollowed from our weight. I have laid me down and touched the spot, the place you rested in; the grass I once found gracious has drunk my tears. Nay, even the branches have laid aside their leafage, and no birds warble their sweet complaint; only the Daulian bird, most mournful mother who wreaked unholy vengeance on her lord, laments in song Ismarian Itys. The bird sings of Itys, Sappho sings of love abandoned—that is all; all else is silent as midnight.
There is a sacred spring, bright and more transparent than any crystal—many think a spirit dwells therein—above which a watery lotus spreads its branches wide, a grove all in itself; the earth is green with tender turf. Here I had laid my wearied limbs and given way to tears, when there stood before my eyes a Naiad. She stood before me, and said: “Since thou art burning with unrequited flame, Ambracia is the land thou needs must seek. There Phoebus from on high looks down on the whole wide stretch of sea—of Actium, the people call it, and Leucadian. From here Deucalion, inflamed with love for Pyrrha, cast himself down, and struck the waters with body all unharmed. Without delay, his passion was turned from him, and fled from his tenacious breast, and Deucalion was freed from the fires of love. This is the law of yonder place. Go straightway seek the high Leucadian cliff”, nor from it fear to leap! “
Her warning given, she ceased her speech, and vanished; in terror I arose, and my eyes could not keep back their tears. I shall go, O nymph, to seek out the cliff” thou toldst of; away with fear—my maddening passion casts it out. Whatever shall be, better ’twill be than now! Breeze, come—bear me up; my limbs have no great weight. Do thou, too, tender Love, place thy pinions beneath me, lest I die and bring reproach on the Leucadian wave! Then will I consecrate to Phoebus my shell, our common boon, and under it shall be writ one verse, and a second:
SAPPHO THE SINGER, O PHOEBUS, HATH GRATEFULLY BROUGHT THEE A ZITHER: TOKEN WELL SUITED TO ME, TOKEN WELL SUITED TO THEE.
Yet why do you send me to the shores of Actium, unhappy that I am, when you yourself could turn back your wandering steps? You can better help my state than the Leucadian wave; both in beauty and in kindness you will be a Phoebus to me. Or, if I perish, O more savage than any cliff or wave, can you endure the name of causing my death? But how much better for my bosom to be pressed to yours than headlong to be hurled from the rocks!—the bosom, Phaon, of her whom you were wont to praise, and who so often seemed to you to have the gift of genius. Would I were eloquent now! Grief stops my art, and all my genius is halted by my woes. My old-time power in song will not respond to the call; my plectrum for grief is silent; mute for grief is my lyre. Lesbian daughters of the wave, ye who are to wed and ye already wed, ye Lesbian daughters, whose names have been sung to the Aeolian lyre, ye Lesbian daughters whom I have loved to my reproach, cease thronging to me more to hear my shell! Phaon has swept away all that ye loved before—ah, wretched me. how nearly I came then to saying “my Phaon”! Accomplish his return; your singer, too, will then return. My genius had its powers from him; with him they were swept away.
But do my prayers accomplish aught, or is his churl’s heart moved? or is it cold and hard, and do the zephyrs bear away my idly lading words? Would that the winds that bear away my words might bring your sails again; this deed wen- fitting for you, tardy one, had you a feeling breast. If you intend return, and are making for your stern the votive gift, why tear my heart with delay? Weigh anchor! Venus who rose from the sea makes way on the sea for the lover. The wind will speed you on your course; do you but weigh anchor! Cupid himself will be helmsman, sitting upon the stern; himself with tender hand will spread and furl the sail. But if your pleasure be to fly afar from Pelasgian Sappho—and yet you will find no cause for flying from me—ah, at least let a cruel letter tell me this in my misery, that I may seek my fate in the Leucadian wave!
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