And prayed your love,
And called to strongest Zeus and Thyona’s son
The cherished. Like them, lady queen, I ask
To return to my country, homecoming with your
Benediction,
That among the virgins of Mytilene, as before,
I perform the chaste and holy rites in splendor,
And teach the dances and make songs for the holy days.
O bring me home.
II
Before me, Potni’ Era, appear to mortal eyes,
Clear in body, beautiful, bright,
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
107 Whether you are at Kypros and Paphos
Or at Panormos.
108 You make me hot.
109 I gave you a white goat.
110
111 Until all of you are willing.
112 You have come, and done,
And I was waiting for you
To temper the red desire
That burned my heart.
113 Beauty is for the eyes and fades in a while,
But goodness is a beauty that lasts forever.
114 I don’t know which way I’m running.
My mind is part this way, part that.
115 ] come forward, tell [
116 Bridegroom, exult! Just as you prayed,
The rites are done and you are married.
The girl, just as you prayed, is yours.
All gracefulness your body and your eyes
Softly Eros rises in your longing face
Aphródita has honored you above all.
117 Wet handkerchief.
118
ALKAIOS
I have: something I’m willing to tell you,
But bashfulness holds me back.
SAPPHO
If your heart is for the noble and beautiful
And your tongue is free of all things ugly,
Reticence need not lower your eyes:
Speak out whatever is fitting and right.
119 [
[
[Her] shirt
Yel[low]
[Her] petticoat
And splendor
Radiant yellow
[Her] red dress
Robes the color of peaches
Peach-flower crowns
Pretty eyes
Phrygian
Red
Carpet
[
P[
120 Dawn with small golden feet.
121 Parthenia, Parthenia,
poi me lipois’ apoikhe?
Girlhood O girlhood,
Lost of a sudden,
Where have you gone?
Ouketi exo
pros se
ouket’ exo,
Nowhere, bride my darling,
Nowhere near you.
122
123 Black dreams of such virulence[
That sleep’s sweetness[
And terrible grief[
This place is religious[
Happiness, no, and hope neither[
And I indeed am so[
Delightful the games[
And I[
This[
124 There are none like her,
And none will ever see the light of the sun,
None hereafter will have that mastery.
Or, to accommodate another meaning of sophia:
I cannot believe there is any girl
Under the sun, or shall be to come,
With an intelligence like hers.
125
126 ] bridegroom, for your tiresome bachelor friends
127
to be borne
any
regard that pleasure
you know and
have forgotten but grief
[
if any speak
for I also
no longer than to the day after tomorrow
to be loved
love, I say, will become strong
[
and grievous
sharp
[
and know this
whoever you
will love
[
[
of the arrows
128 Clear keen song.
129 A phrase remembered by Aristides
when he was talkig about the clear
light of Smyrna:
Brightness that strikes the eyes
130 O beautiful, O graceful
131 When songs from the heart.
132 When she, the round moon, rose,
They stood in a ring around her altar.
133 To Gyrinno.
134 I put here, my lazy girl, this soft cushion,
And if, with your blouse off, in your soft arms.
135 Pure and holy Graces and Muses who live at Pieria
136 Place there the nature of the violet breasted.
137 Slender Graces and Muses with beautiful hair,
Come hither, come now.
138 He is dying, Kytherea,
The young Adonis,
What can we put around him?
Beat your breasts, girls,
Tear your dresses.
139
140 More valuable than gold.
141 is fragrant
[five lines indecipherable]
walk
so I saw
142 Those discords,
I don’t think,
Will reach the sky.
143 Seven ways in terror,
the laurel tree,
a forest all of pine,
The empty,
And these
the wayfarer
As the mouse, silent, hidden,
O girlish heart,
a mind so calm that
Comes with kisses and open arms
Seven
her beauty
Is.
144
145 You too, Kalliopa,
Yourself.
146
] called you
] filled your mouth with plenty
] girls, fine gifts
] lovesong, the keen-toned harp
] an old woman’s flesh
] hair that used to be black
] knees will not hold
] stand like dappled fawns
] but what could I do?
] no longer able to begin again
] rosy armed Dawn
] bearing to the ends of the earth
] nevertheless seized
] the cherished wife
] withering is common to all
] may that girl come and be my lover
I have loved all graceful things [ ] and this
Eros has given me, beauty and the light of the sun.
147 I am willing.
148 Once upon a time, the story goes,
Leda found a hyacinthine egg.
149 Tenderer than the rose.
150 A coronet of celery.
151 To die is evil.
The gods think so,
Else they would die.
152 Hail, bride!
Hail, honored bridegroom!
Long life!
153 More harmonious than lyres.
154
155 [ as it happens
] wishes, being childless still
] I see the fulfilment
] I summoned
] all of a sudden against my heart
] as much as you wish it to come about
] to struggle against me
] is voluptuous in her enticement
] but you know well
156 It is not fitting to mourn the dead
In a house where the Muses are served.
Let us have no mourning here.
157 Muses, come down again,
Leaving that golden [
158 Weaker than water.
159
160 Eros, chil
d of Gea and Ouranos.
161 Whiter than milk.
162 The goddess Persuasion,
Daughter of Aphródita.
163 Medeia.
164 Lato and Nioba were very loving friends.
165 All colors tangled together.
166 We shall give, Father said.
167 me away from them
and we became
like the gods
against the gods
Andromeda
no longer unstained
Tyndarides
with grace
honest no more with
the great palaces
the doors
in a fury
the guard corporal
wrestling
168 And night’s black sleep upon the eyes.
169 Your darling.
170 With the bride that happy,
Let the bridegroom rejoice.
171 Of the Muses.
172 Whiter by far than an egg.
173
174 The island Aiga.
176 As good natured as a little girl,
I don’t snap and pout and rage.
177 The dress.
178
179 She calls her daughter.
180 A girl picking a flower just opened.
181 ] above[
] you shall remember[
] in our girlhood[
] we made[
] for and[
] the town-[
[ several lines gone]
] facing[
182 Handbag.
183 Falling downward.
184 Ektor.
185 All that’s [loved]
Tell [
Tongue [
Mythology [
And to men [
Larger [
186 And this [
Grief from the divine powers [
And the responsibility [
Nor many [
187 Became [
For no [
188 Gentle of voice.
Or, considering
the scribe’s spelling:
With honey in her words.
189
190 Vines trellised on poles.
191 I might lead.
192
193 That man seems to her.
194 Trench for watering the garden.
195 Danger.
196 Wise in many things.
197 Soda.
198 Without guile.
199 I wish to go.
200
201 Ford at the river.
202
203 O Adonis!
204 Dawn.
205 The girl with the pleasing voice.
206 You have begun to forget me [
] or do you love some other?
207 Just when dawn in her golden sandals.
208 beforehand
to carry
and willing
Arkheanassa
whenever in dreams
the softball umpire
fell in love
209
210 Lead off, my lyre,
And we shall sing together.
211
212
I
213
The moon has set, and the Pleiades.
It is the middle of the night,
Hour follows hour. I lie alone.
II
The moon has gone
To her Endymion,
The Pleiades
Their seven lovers please.
Since Esperos glistened
And the moon rose red,
I have listened
Alone in my bed.
ALKMAN
1. A Hymn to Artemis of the Strict Observance
For a Chorus of Spartan Girls Dressed as Doves
To Sing at Dawn on the Feast of the Plow
I
1
2
3
4 And there is the vengeance of the gods.
He is a happy man who can weave his days,
No trouble upon the loom.
And I, I sing of Agido,
Of her light. She is like the sun
To which she makes our prayers,
The witness of its radiance.
Yet I can neither praise her nor blame her
Till I have sung of another,
Sung of our choirmaster,
Who stands among us as in a pasture
One splendid stallion
Paws the meadow, a champion racer,
A horse that runs in dreams.
5 Imagine her if you can. Her hair,
As gold as a Venetian mane,
Flowers around her silver eyes.
What can I say to make you see?
She is Hagesikhora and
Agido, almost, almost as beautiful,
Is a Kolaxaian filly running behind her
In the races at Ibeno.
A Pleiades of doves they are
Contending at dawn before the altar of Artemis
For the honor of offering the sacred plow
Which we have brought to the goddess.
They are the white star Sirius rising
In the honey and spice of a summer night.
6 Neither abundance of purple
Can defend us with its glory,
Nor golden snakes engraved with eyes and scales,
Nor our sweet violet eyes.
Nor can Nanno’s hair, Areta’s goddess face,
Thylakis nor Kleësithera,
Nor Ainesimbrota to whom we cry
Let Astaphis he ours,
Let Philylla look our way sometimes,
Damareta and the lovely Wianthemis,
Keep back defeat unless
Hagesikhora alone, our love,
Be our victory’s shield.
7 And she is, she is our own,
The splendid-ankled Hagesikhora!
With Agido, by whose side she lingers,
She honors the rites with her beauty.
Accept her prayers O gods,
For she is your handiwork,
Perfect of her kind.
And I, I, O Choirmaster,
Am but an ordinary girl.
I hoot like an owl in the roof.
I long to worship the goddess of the dawn
Whose gift is peace. For Hagesikhora
We sing, for her we virgin girls
Make our lovely harmonies.
8 To the swift trace-horse
II
4 Vendettas end among the gods.
Serenity’s against the odds.
But weave and anguish is your thread.
Agido’s light I sing instead,
Which is the sun’s, and she our sun;
They shine, we cannot tell which one.
And yet I must not praise her so:
One lovelier than Agido
Must have first praise. Choirmaster, she,
Dazzling as when a stallion, he
Runs beside his stateliest mare,
Outshines us all, O no compare!
A race-horse, she, a champion blood
Long-tailed Paphlagonian stud.
5 See how her hair, so thick, so bold,
A long mane of Venetian gold,
Flowers around her silver face.
What figured image can I place
That Hagesikhora shall stand
As if you touched her with your hand?
I’ll keep the horse. Then Agido,
Less beautiful, but scarcely so,
A Colassaian filly seems,
Behind her runs and like her gleams
In the Ibenian races. Or
A Pleiades of doves they are,
Or Sirius rising to light
The honeydark sweet summer night.
6 Hold O Sidonian red our wall.
With wrists snakebound we stand or fall.
Our golden, written
serpents stare,
Lydian bright bands bind our hair.
We stand, contending, jeweled girls,
Unarmed except by Nanno’s curls.
Armed with but our violet eyes,
Ainesimbrota’s beauty vies,
That Philylla loves, and Thyakis,
Damareta and Astaphis,
Wianthemis the randy, too,
Klesithera, Areta who
Is like a god, but silver-heeled
Hagesikhora is our shield.
7 Is Hagesikhora our own,
So elegant of anklebone?
As faithful as to Agido!
The gods we could not honor so
But that, O gods, you love her too.
What you mean humankind to do
She does, and brings perfection home,
While I, who sing by metronome,
Ordinary and unaloof,
Hoot like an owl in the roof.
When on Aoti’s A we pitch
How flat the Doric counterstitch
O Hagesikbora, unless
You join the ringing loveliness.
III
Oionos, graybound lean, dove-gray of eye,
Herakles’ mother Alkmena’s brother Likymnios’ son,
Came, Artemis bound and looking upon the world
With the broad-backed hero to Sparta’s invisible wall,
Came, fought the watchdog of Hippokoön, and under
The walking sticks of Hippokoön’s sons died.
A summer storm his anger black with thunder Herakles
Struck the Hippokoönta as lightning hits a mountain.
His hands were terror when he struck, and hell his eyes.
Struck and retreated, the bite of a knife in his hand.
But before the sun had changed his gate again,
He came shouting back with a squadron of soldiers.
Ruled thereafter over the bouse of Hippokoön
Persephoneia, bride of the lord of the dead.
For they bad vied before with Kastor and Polydeukes;
Enasphoros with Helen, a family against Tyndareus.
It is not wise, it is unmeasured, to bait divinity
With common hands, to scale Olympos wild of heart.
There fell Enarsphoros the breeder of horses,
Thebros the swift, victor of races in armor,
Euteikhes, and the lord of lands Areios,
Tall, bold sons, mightiest of men half gods.
Eurytos and Lykaithos crossed into Hades,
Returning to fate the debt of existence.
Vengeance, vengeance, and the hand of the gods.
Life is not woven without grief on the loom.
Grace, grace is not from humankind.
For peace we cry O Artemis the grandmother of lions,
Nurse of hedgehogs and fawns, white-breasted dawn!
To the fading stars we sing, we sing our Agido
The doe-slight, slender cousin of Hagesikhora the tall.
She is so like the sun that when she lifts her rosy arms,