And sing that Ektor and Andrómakha
Are like two of the gods together.
15 Desire has shaken my mind
As wind in the mountain forests
Roars through trees.
16 You were to me then a shy little girl.
17 Who is this wild girl with the charm
To get you under her spell? [
In a country frock[
Too ignorant to arrange her dress
So that the hem is at the ankle.
18 With eyes like that, stand still,
Gaze with candor from that beauty,
Bold as friends before each other.
19 Swallow, swallow,
Pandion’s daughter
Of wind and sky,
Why me, why me?
20 He seems to be a good, that man
Facing you, who leans to be close,
Smiles, and, alert and glad, listens
To your mellow voice
And quickens in love at your laughter
That stings my breasts, jolts my heart
If I dare the shock of a glance.
I cannot speak,
My tongue sticks to my dry mouth,
Thin fire spreads beneath my skin.
My eyes cannot see and my aching ears
Roar in their labyrinths.
Chill sweat slides down my body,
I shake, I turn greener than grass.
I am neither living nor dead and cry
From the narrow between.
But endure, even this grief of love.
21 Down from the blue sky
Came Eros taking off his clothes,
His shirt of Phoenician red.
22 The word went around
[And]rome[da] was forgotten
Rites and games in their seasons
Sappho O we loved you
To the Queen in Kypros
Tall in our certainty
Daylight was in those eyes
Famous in every ear
Young beyond Acheron.
23 If only they had woven me such luck,
Aphródita crowned with golden leaves,
When my cloth was on the loom.
24
Around your loveliness. For when she sees
The long pleats of your dress in their moving
She catches her breath at the beauty,
And I laugh for joy.
Goddess born from the sea at Kypros
I
25 A company of horsemen or of infantry
Or a fleet of ships, some say,
Is the black earth’s finest sight,
But to me it is what you love.
This can be understood in its round truth
By all, clearly, for she who in her beauty
Surpassed all mankind, Elena, left her husband,
The best of men,
And sailed to Troia, mindless of her daughter,
And of her parents whom she loved.
I would rather see the fetching way she walks
And the smiling brightness of her eyes
Than the chariots and charioteers of Lydia
In full armor charging.
II
Handsome horses O shiver and admire,
Long ships and symmetries of archers,
But black earth’s fine sight for me
Is her I love.
Heart’s hunger all can understand.
Did not she up and leave the best of men,
Helen that beautifulest of womankind?
And forgot her kin and forgot her children
To follow however far into whatever luck
The wild hitherward of her headlong heart
Anaktoria so far away, remember me,
Remember me, who had rather
Hear the melody of your walking
And see the torch-flare of your smile
Than the long battleline of Lydia’s charioteers,
Round shields and helmets.
26 And there, when they had stirred
The magic liquor in the jug,
And Ermais, in each held out cup
Had poured from a leather bottle
Every god his ambrosia,
Each tipped some out, for piety,
And rang his cup against another,
That all bright and noble things
Come to our new kinsman.
27 Sweetpeas flowered golden
All over the marsh.
28 Too much is enough
Of that girl Gorgo.
29 Air
Bound
Cu[p
Mus[lin
Forth[with
Of sleep
[five lines
indecipherable]
Beautiful
Fluttering
[ ] ivory
Cl[asp.
30 They wore red yarn to bind their hair,
This, or no finery at all.
That, to be grand [
But those labyrinthine curls of yours,
Yellower than [
Great overhanging hat of leaves
And the fattest of flowers,
With a snug and perfect snood
Embroidered, Persian, and from Sardis,
And Kleïs, I do not have for you
That rich embroidered snood
That you want, but in Mytilena [
These Kleanaktida [
You flee [
These memories. Know that our name is gone.
31 Bride with beautiful feet.
32 Though you are my lover,
Take for wife a younger woman;
Find a newer bed to lie in,
I could not bear to be the older.
33 Dusk and western star,
You gather
What glittering sunrise
Scattered far,
The ewe to fold,
Kid and nanny home,
But the daughter
You send wandering
From her mother.
Hesperos, most beautiful
Of stars.
34 And your boy’s beauty,
What else is so trim, so lithe,
Impetuous follower?
Straight slender trees
Have that balance.
35
silent, still
the holy goatskin wearing
Kytherean, I am praying
she who owns my mind
hear my prayers, so high
she who has left me behind
against me green
harsh [
36 Never, Irana, have I met anybody
More bothersome than you.
I
37 With quickened heart they hovered,
Fluttered, and lit with folding wings,
The doves. My heart is cold.
II
Their wings fold down,
My heart grows chill.
38 Loving girls more than Gello.
39 She had others at Kytherea to nurse her,
But Peitho, they say, is the daughter of Aphródita
40 She was like that sweetest apple
That ripened highest on the tree,
That the harvesters couldn’t reach,
And pretended they forgot.
Like the mountain hyacinth trod underfoot
By shepherd men, its flower purple on the ground.
41 Wrapped up in rich shaggy wool.
42
43
Her dancing, of all, was your enchantment.
And now she moves among the Lydian ladies
As when the sun has set and the stars come out
And the rose red moon
Lifts into the midst of their pale brightness.
Her light is everywhere, on the salt-bitter sea,
On fields thick and rich with flowers
And beautiful under dew,
On roses, tangled parsley, and the honey-headed clover.
H
er light is everywhere, remembering
Atthis in her young sweetness, desiring her
With tender, heavy heart.
They are not mine, the deerhide shoes of Asia,
That body to hold, with its goddess’s beauty
To have against [
44 They gave me honor,
The gift of their skill.
45 Her shoes were leather and from Asia,
Rich Lydian patterns across the toes.
46
47 Came husband,
mischief,
]ing bri[ght]
48 Don’t stir
The trash.
49 Where do the butler’s big feet go?
Fourteen yards from heel to toe!
Five red oxen gladly died,
Ten frantic cobblers stitched the hide,
That stylish slippers trim and neat
Besplendor those important feet.
50 High in the chariot,
As when the mastersinger of Lesbos
Against all the outlanders.
51 Violet breasted daughter of Kronos.
52 As once in Crete,
A round dance of girls
In that antique time.
53 She taught the champion runner,
Hero of Gyara.
54 Arkheanassa and Gorgo
Sleep together as married folk,
Wherefore she is called her wife.
And Pleistodiké, she was her wife
In between Gongyla and Gorgo.
They’ve given themselves a name
55 With that island-born
Holiness of Kypros
I talked; she talked,
And all in a dream.
56 Now that Andromeda has her fair reply
Psappho, why Aphródita of so many pleasures?
57 All yellow gold and like a daughter,
A flower, that girl, with a flower’s beauty,
And, Kleïs, not for all the girls in Lydia,
My word of honor on our friendship,
Nor for all the Mytilenian virgins,
Would I leave her.
58
59
60
I
61
II
Pray now the women
At Demeter’s altar
Prophecies, songs,
brightness and
Fortunate and well-bred together
crushes, crashes
These black ships
Haul in and batten, the sailors,
High seas, heavy weather, gales,
Reefs and land off port
62 Aphródita
delightful words
may throw
holding
sits
seafoam.
63 For Aphródita, this purple handkerchief
To wear on her head against the heat,
An honored gift from Phokaia.
64 O there are no others like her,
Not in these times, lover.
I
65 Percussion, salt and honey,
A quivering in the thighs;
He shakes me all over again,
Eros who cannot be thrown,
Who stalks on all fours
Like a beast.
II
Eros makes me shiver again
Strengthless in the knees,
Eros gall and honey,
Snake-sly, invincible.
66 You hate me who loves you, Atthis,
And flutter around Andromeda.
67 O Pollyanna
Polyanaktidas,
Good-bye, good-bye.
68 Golden goblets with knucklebone stems.
69 I am Aphródita of the shifting eyes.
My servants are Eros and you, my Sappho.
70 The scholar Aristides, pondering
material and spiritual wealth,
recalls that Sappho in a poem said:
The Muses have made me happy
And worthy of the world’s envy,
So that even beyond death
I shall be remembered.
71
Let trouble come to sting the whipper
And a high wind blow him away.
72 And I yearn
And I hunt.
73 The stars around the moon in her beauty
Dim their bright patterns of fire
When her light is full upon the world.
The Emperor Julian, quoting Sappho in a letter,
remembered these lines as:
When the moon is silver
She hides the stars around her
From our sight.
74 Daughter of kings
The sons of kings,
Hail!
I
75 Leave your siege of her violet softness.
The night is long and we shall sing
Epithalamia outside your door.
Call to your bachelor friends to come.
All night long, like the nightingale,
We shall stay awake and sing.
II
The night is long but girls will sing
Songs all night outside your door
To keep you from her violet softness.
Leave her alone! Go back to your friends,
Or all night long, like nightingales,
We shall stay awake and sing.
76 For even then, when you were a little girl,
Come on! you said, let’s sing to your lyre
A wonder of gracefulness.
And now we walk to a wedding,
Beautifully you [
77
78 Before my lying heart could speak for life
I longed for death. Misery the size of terror
Was in her tears when we unclasped forever.
Sappho! she cried,
That I could stay! Joy goes with you, I said,
Remember what has been the rose-and-violet crowns
I wove into your hair when we stood so close together,
Heart against heart,
The garlands I plaited of flower with flower
Around your graceful neck, the oils of spices
As precious as for a queen [
79 First news of springtime,
The lovesong of the nightingale.
80 I have neither the honey nor the bee.
81 Haughtier than a horse.
82 And let her find you, Kyprian, bitterer still,
To keep her loud tongue from saying ever
That Eros hot and flustering came to Dorikha
A second time.
83
84 of Dorikha
called, and no
reaches to, arrogant of heart
to be half asleep with love
85 Heart
altogether
I can
86 Staying
in the burnt offering
her, holding the finest
and she, walking
for we saw
of the work
87
88 Shall give
no matter what
the beautiful and the splendid
you may grieve
my disgrace
rising, on
were you pained
not this way
is [she] inclined
nor yet
I understand
the worst man of all
89
90 Someone, I’m bold to say,
Will remember us
In time hereafter.
91 Wealth without moral splendor
Makes a dangerous neighbor;
But join the two together:
There is no higher fortune.
92 Sometimes she closed her eyes
All night long.
93 Far more melodious than the harp,
More golden than gold.
94 Lady Dawn.
95 When fury rages in the breast,
Watch that reiterating tongue.
96 Softer than a fine dre
ss.
97 These pleasures now, my constant girls,
I shall sing in splendid songs.
98 While they kept watch around her
99 To whose eyes?
100 Eros weaver of myths,
Eros sweet and bitter,
Eros bringer of pain.
I
101
I
102 Raise the ridge-pole higher, higher,
O marriage night O binding god
Carpenters! Make the roof-tree taller,
O marriage night O binding god
He comes, the husband, and walks like Ares,
O marriage night O binding god
He’s taller by far than a tall man,
O marriage night O binding god
II
Pitch the roof-beam higher, builders.
O hymn Hymen, high men, O!
Joiners! The roof is far too low.
O hymn Hymen high, men O!
He stands, the husband, as long as Ares,
O hymn high Hymen, men O!
And he can’t get it through the door.
103 Mermaids and you brine-born on the Kypros sand,
Bring back my brother over your sea unhurt,
That his wandering heart have for its own
Its real desire.
Wash off all that wrong upon his head;
Make him a brightness to those who love him
Let him be willing to do honor to his sister
Townspeople murmuring in the marketplace
104 Kyprian and sea-daughters of Nereos,
Grant to my brother that he come here
Unharmed, and that all the wishes in his heart
Come to be fulfilled,
Let him be washed clean before the gods,
That he be a delight to all who love him.
105 Near me [
Lady Era [
Their praying, the princes of Atreos [
The kings [
Brought to its end [
From the beginning around [
At a loss for their passage here [
They could not.
Till you and Zeus [
And of Thyona the love[ly
And now [
In the manner of old [
The pure and chaste [
Girls [
Around [
I
106 Stand beside me, worshiped Hera, strange in a dream,
Ghost or visitation but in a shape all grace,
Sudden as before the famous Mycenaean kings
When they cried out
At the awful end of pulling Troy to the ground,
Their ships turned homeward down the rapid Skamander,
And knew that lest you guide them they were luckless,