The Complete Poems of Sappho
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Himerios Orations 9.4 (p. 75s. COLONNA)
Only Sappho among women loved beauty along with the lyre, and so she dedicated all her poetry to Afroditi and Eroses, making a young woman’s beauty and graces the subject of her songs.
Himerios Orations 28.2 (p. 128s. COLONNA)
Sappho loves the rose and always crowns it with praise, comparing the beautiful virgins to it, and she compares it to the arms of the Graces when they have left them bare.
Philostratos Letters 51
Anakreon of Teos was the first poet after Sappho of Lesbos to make love the main subject of his poetry.
Pausanias Description of Greece 1.25.1
The grace that comes from her use of formal devices is evident and frequent, such as the use of repetition where the bride says to her virginity: “Virginity, virginity, where have you gone, leaving me abandoned?” And she replies with the same formal device: “No longer will I come to you. No longer will I come.” Far more grace is evident than if it had been said only once and this formal device had not been used. Although repetition seems to have been invented in order to show force, Sappho uses even what is very forceful with great charm.
Dimitrios On Style 140 (p. 33 RADERMACHER)
Diotima says [in Plato’s Symposium] that Eros [love] flourishes in abundance and dies in want. Sappho put these together and called Eros “bittersweet” [literally “sweetbitter”]. [See poem 130.]
Maximus of Tyre Orations 18.9GH (P. 232 HOBEIN)
From Greek Poetry on Sappho
This tomb contains the silent bones of Sappho,
but her wise sayings are immortal.
Pinytos, in The Greek Anthology 7.16
O stranger, when you pass my Aiolian tomb, do not say
that I, the singer of Mytilini, am dead.
Human hands made this tomb, and mortal works fall
quickly into oblivion. But compare me
to the sacred Muses, from each of whom I took one flower
for my nine books. You’ll see I have escaped
from the gloom of Hades, and each dawn the sun
wakens the name of the lyric poet Sappho.
Tullius Laureas, in The Greek Anthology 7.17
Anyti has many lilies woven in the wreath, Moiro many
white ones. Sappho has few, but roses.
Meleagros’s poem in The Greek Anthology 4.1
My name is Sappho. My song surpasses the song
of women as Homer’s the song of men.
Antipatros of Thessaloniki, in The Greek Anthology 7.15
Memory was astounded when she heard
the honey-voiced Sappho, and she wondered
whether mankind had a tenth Muse.
Antipatros of Sidon, in The Greek Anthology 9.66
Aiolian land, you cover Sappho sung as a mortal Muse
among the deathless Muses whom Kypris
and Eros nourished, with whom Persuasion wove
an undying wreath of the Pierian Muses.
She was a joy to Greece and to you. You fates who twirl
the triple thread on your spindle,
why didn’t you spin eternal life for the singer inventing
the enduring poems of Helikon’s daughters?
Antipatros of Sidon, in The Greek Anthology 7.14
Your poems, Sappho, are the sweetest pillow
for young lovers. Surely Pieria
or ivied Helikon honors you, whose breath is equal
to theirs, you Muse of Aiolian Eressos.
Hymen, the wedding god, is near you when he, bright
torch in hand, stands by the bed
of the newlywed, or Afroditi keeps you near as she
mourns the young offspring of Adonis
in the sacred grove of the blessed. I greet you as a god.
Your songs are our immortal daughters.
Dioskorides, in The Greek Anthology 7.407
Some say there are nine Muses. Count again.
Behold the tenth: Sappho of Lesbos.
Plato, in The Greek Anthology 9.506
Stranger, if you sail to Mytilini, city of beautiful dances
that kindled the fire of Sappho’s beauty . . .
Nossis, in The Greek Anthology 7.718
And you know how the Lesbian Alkaios played
many songs on the lyre about his warm love
for Sappho. He was a poet who loved Sappho,
the nightingale of song, but he annoyed Anakreon,
poet of Teos, because of his eloquence.
Hermesianax, in Athinaios Scholars at Dinner 598B
Portrait of Sappho
Painter, creative Nature herself gave you the Pierian
Muse from Mytilini to portray. Clarity is in her eyes
and this plainly reveals an imagination full of intelligence.
Her flesh is smooth and not painted unnaturally,
showing her simplicity. Mingled in her face are joy
and intellectual spirit, of the Muse joined with Kypris.
Damohares, in The Greek Anthology 16.310
Sappho’s kisses would be sweet; sweet the embraces
of her snowy thighs and sweet all her body.
But her soul is adamantly unyielding. For her love stops
at her lips and the rest she keeps virgin.
Who can suffer this? One who can stand this,
could easily endure the thirst of Tantalos.
Paulus Silentiarius, in The Greek Anthology 5.246
Among Lesbian women with lovely locks of hair,
Sappho is the jewel.
Antipatros of Thessaloniki, in The Greek Anthology 9.26
Fate granted you no small glory
on the day you first saw the light
of the sun, Sappho, for we Muses
agreed that your words should be
deathless; and the Father of All,
the Thunderer, also concurred.
You will be sung by all mortal men,
and not be poor in glorious fame.
Anonymous, in The Greek Anthology 9.521
Sappho was not ninth among men
but rather tenth among the lovely Muses.
Anonymous, in The Greek Anthology 9.571
Come to the shimmering precinct of bull-faced Hera,
women of Lesbos, your delicate feet
spinning as you dance beautifully for the goddess.
Sappho will lead, her golden lyre
in her hand. You radiate as you dance. You seem
to hear Kalliopi’s thrilling song.
Anonymous, in The Greek Anthology 9.189
From Latin Poetry on Sappho
The love still breathes, the flame is still alive
that the Aiolian woman girl sang to her lyre.
Horace Odes 4.9.11
The manly Sappho tames the muse of Archilochos
through her prosody . . .
Horace Epode 1.19.28
A girl more refined than the Sapphic Muse.
Catullus 35.16
What did Sappho of Lesbos teach
but how to love women?
Ovid Tristia 2.363
Sappho sang:
In those days when Atthis was small
my own girlhood was blossoming.
Terentianus Maurus On Meters6
Sappho to Phaon
Say, lovely youth that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon’s eyes forget his Sappho’s hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The lute neglected and the lyric Muse:
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
I burn, I burn, as when through ripened corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne.
Phaon to Aetna’s scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Aetna’s fir
es.
No more my soul a charm in music finds;
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds:
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please;
Love enters there and I’m my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of my guilty love:
All other loves are lost in only thine,
Ah, youth ungrateful to a flame like mine!
Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,
Those heavenly looks and dear deluding eyes?
The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear:
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
Not Bacchus’ self with Phaon could compare:
Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame;
One Daphne warmed and one the Cretan dame;
Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me
Than e’en those gods contend in charms with thee.
The Muses teach me all their softest lays,
And the wide world resounds with Sappho’s praise.
Though great Alcaeus more sublimely sings
And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,
No less renown attends the moving lyre
Which Venus tunes and all her Loves inspire.
To me what Nature has in charms denied
Is well by wit’s more lasting flames supplied.
Though short my stature, yet my name extends
To heaven itself and earth’s remotest ends:
Brown as I am, an Aithiopian dame
Inspired young Perseus with a generous flame:
Turtles and doves of different hue unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign
But such as merit, such as equal thine,
By none, alas, by none thou canst be moved;
Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved.
Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ;
Once in her arms you centred all your joy:
No time the dear remembrance can remove,
For oh how vast a memory has love!
My music then you could for ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear:
You stopt with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
In all I pleased, but most in what was best;
And the last joy was dearer than the rest:
Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired
You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired,
Till all dissolving in the trance we lay
And in tumultuous raptures died away.
The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame:
Why was I born, ye gods, a Lesbian dame?
But ah, beware, Sicilian nymphs, nor boast
That wandering heart which I so lately lost;
Nor be with all those tempting words abused:
Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.
And you that rule Sicilia’s happy plains,
Have pity, Venus, on your poet’s pains.
Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run
And still increase the woes so soon begun?
Inured to sorrow from my tender years,
My parent’s ashes drank my early tears:
My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame,
Ignobly burned in a destructive flame:
An infant daughter late my griefs increased,
And all a mother’s cares distract my breast.
Alas, what more could Fate itself impose,
But thee, the last and greatest of my woes?
No more my robes in waving purple flow,
Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;
No more my locks in ringlets curled diffuse
The costly sweetness of Arabian dews;
Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind
That fly disordered with the wanton wind.
For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?
He’s gone whom only she desired to please!
Cupid’s light darts my tender bosom move;
Still is there cause for Sappho still to love;
So from my birth the Sisters fixed my doom,
And gave to Venus all my life to come;
Or, while my Muse in melting notes complains,
My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
By charms like thine, which all my soul have won,
Who might not—ah, who would not be undone?
For those, Aurora Cephalus might scorn,
And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn:
For those, might Cynthia lengthen Phaon’s sleep,
And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep:
Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies,
But Mars on thee might look with Venus’ eyes.
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
O useful time for lovers to employ!
Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race,
Come to these arms and melt in this embrace!
The vows you never will return, receive;
And take at least the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears:
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure ’twas not much to bid one kind adieu:
At least, to feign was never hard to you.
“Farewell, my Lesbian love,” you might have said;
Or coldly thus, “Farewell, O Lesbian maid.”
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover’s gift your Sappho could confer;
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give
But this,—“Be mindful of our loves, and live.”
Now by the Nine, those powers adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee;—
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale I stood;
Grief chilled my breast and stopt my freezing blood;
No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
Fixed in a stupid lethargy of woe.
But when its way the impetuous passion found,
I rend my tresses and my breast I wound;
I rave, then weep; I curse, and then complain;
Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame
Whose first-born infant feeds the funeral flame.
My scornful brother with a smile appears,
Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears;
His hated image ever haunts my eyes;—
“And why this grief? thy daughter lives,” he cries.
Stung with my love and furious with despair,
All torn my garments and my bosom bare,
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim;
Such inconsistent things are love and shame.
Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing and my dream by night.—
O night more pleasing than the brightest day,
When fancy gives what absence takes away,
And, dressed in all its visionary charms,
Restores my fair deserter to my arms.
Then round your neck in wanton wreath I twine;
Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine:
A thousand tender words I hear and speak;
A thousand melting kisses give and take:
Then fiercer joys; I blush to mention these,
Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.
But when with day the sweet delusio
ns fly,
And all things wake to life and joy, but I;
As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again:
Then frantic rise; and, like some fury, rove
Through lonely plains, and through the silent grove,
As if the silent grove and lonely plains,
That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.
I view the grotto, once the scene of love,
The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,
That charmed me more, with native moss o’ergrown,
Than Phrygian marble or the Parian stone:
I find the shades that veiled our joys before;
But, Phaon gone, those shades delight no more.
Here the pressed herbs with bending tops betray
Where oft entwined in amorous folds we lay;
I kiss that earth which once was pressed by you,
And all with tears the withering herbs bedew.
For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,
And birds defer their songs till thy return:
Night shades the groves, and all in silence lie,—
All but the mournful Philomel and I:
With mournful Philomel I join my strain;
Of Jereus she, of Phaon I complain.
A spring there is whose silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining sands below:
A flowery lotos spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks and seems itself a grove;
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watched by the sylvan genius of the place:
Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood,
Before my sight a watery virgin stood:
She stood and cried,—“O you that love in vain,
Fly hence and seek the fair Leucadian main:
There stands a rock from whose impending steep
Apollo’s fane surveys the rolling deep;
There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burned;
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorned.
But when from hence he plunged into the main
Deucalion scorned, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below.”
She spoke, and vanished with the voice: I rise,