Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics.
Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics.
Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics.
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO: ONE HUNDRED LYRICS ***
SAPPHO
1907
E.B. BROWNING.
INTRODUCTION
THE POETRY OF SAPPHO.--If all the poets and all the lovers of poetry should
be asked to name the most precious of the priceless things which time has
wrung in tribute from the triumphs of human genius, the answer which would
rush to every tongue would be "The Lost Poems of Sappho." These we know to
have been jewels of a radiance so imperishable that the broken gleams of
them still dazzle men's eyes, whether shining from the two small brilliants
and the handful of star-dust which alone remain to us, or reflected merely
from the adoration of those poets of old time who were so fortunate as to
witness their full glory.
For about two thousand five hundred years Sappho has held her place as not
only the supreme poet of her sex, but the chief lyrist of all lyrists.
Every one who reads acknowledges her fame, concedes her supremacy; but to
all except poets and Hellenists her name is a vague and uncomprehended
splendour, rising secure above a persistent mist of misconception. In spite
of all that is in these days being written about Sappho, it is perhaps not
out of place now to inquire, in a few words, into the substance of this
supremacy which towers so unassailably secure from what appear to be such
shadowy foundations.
First, we have the witness of her contemporaries. Sappho was at the height
of her career about six centuries before Christ, at a period when lyric
poetry was peculiarly esteemed and cultivated at the centres of Greek life.
Among the _Molic_ peoples of the Isles, in particular, it had been carried
to a high pitch of perfection, and its forms had become the subject of
assiduous study. Its technique was exact, complex, extremely elaborate,
minutely regulated; yet the essential fires of sincerity, spontaneity,
imagination and passion were flaming with undiminished heat behind the
fixed forms and restricted measures. The very metropolis of this lyric
realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples,
the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue
sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms
to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song--revered,
studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and
disciples, loved and hymned by Alcaeus, and acclaimed by her fellow
craftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. That all the tributes
of her contemporaries show reverence not less for her personality than for
her genius is sufficient answer to the calumnies with which the ribald
jesters of that later period, the corrupt and shameless writers of Athenian
comedy, strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrant our
regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vain pursuit
of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more
than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth of Aphrodite and
Adonis--who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions. The story is further
discredited by the fact that we find no mention of it in Greek literature--
even among those Attic comedians who would have clutched at it so eagerly
and given it so gross a turn--till a date more than two hundred years after
Sappho's death. It is a myth which has begotten some exquisite literature,
both in prose and verse, from Ovid's famous epistle to Addison's gracious
fantasy and some impassioned and imperishable dithyrambs of Mr. Swinburne;
but one need not accept the story as a fact in order to appreciate the
beauties which flowered out from its coloured unreality.
Fortunately for us, however, two small but incomparable odes and a few
scintillating fragments have survived, quoted and handed down in the
eulogies of critics and expositors. In these the wisest minds, the greatest
poets, and the most inspired teachers of modern days have found
justification for the unanimous verdict of antiquity. The tributes of
Addison, Tennyson, and others, the throbbing paraphrases and ecstatic
interpretations of Swinburne, are too well known to call for special
comment in this brief note; but the concise summing up of her genius by Mr.
Watts-Dunton in his remarkable essay on poetry is so convincing and
illuminating that it seems to demand quotation here: "Never before these
songs were sung, and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery
passion, utter a cry like hers; and, from the executive point of view, in
directness, in lucidity, in that high, imperious verbal economy which only
nature can teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the
place of second."
Perhaps the most perilous and the most alluring venture in the whole field
of poetry is that which Mr. Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us
in English verse those lost poems of Sappho of which fragments have
survived. The task is obviously not one of translation or of paraphrasing,
but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction. It is
as if a sculptor of to-day were to set himself, with reverence, and trained
craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and
atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of Polyclitus or
Praxiteles of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon
which to build. Mr. Carman's method, apparently, has been to imagine each
lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable
flavour of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by
the fluidity and freedom of purely original work.
C.G.D. ROBERTS.
CONTENTS
V O Aphrodite
LXVIII You ask how love can keep the mortal soul
Epilogue
SAPPHO
I
II
III
IV
* * * * *
* * * * *
O Aphrodite,
God-born and deathless,
Break not my spirit
With bitter anguish:
Thou wilful empress, 5
I pray thee, hither!
As once aforetime
Well thou didst hearken
To my voice far off,--
Listen, and leaving 10
Thy father's golden
House in yoked chariot,
VI
My tongue is useless;
A subtle fire
Runs through my body;
My eyes are sightless,
And my ears ringing; 15
And undiscovered
Fabulous islands,
Drawn by the lure of
Beauty and summer
And the sea's secret. 30
VII
The Cyprian came to thy cradle,
When thou wast little and small,
And said to the nurse who rocked thee
"Fear not thou for the child:
VIII
XI
XII
In a dream I spoke with the Cyprus-born,
And said to her,
"Mother of beauty, mother of joy,
Why hast thou given to men
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XIX
There is a medlar-tree
Growing in front of my lover's house,
And there all day
The wind makes a pleasant sound.
XX
XXI
Softly the first step of twilight
Falls on the darkening dial,
One by one kindle the lights
In Mitylene.
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXII
XXXIII
Never yet, love, in earth's lifetime,
Hath any cunningest minstrel
Told the one seventh of wisdom,
Ravishment, ecstasy, transport,
Hid in the hue of the hyacinth's 5
Purple in springtime.
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
Phaon, O my lover,
What should so detain thee,
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
LI
And see the third house on the left, with that gleam 20
Of red burnished copper--the hinge of the door
Whereat I shall enter, expected so oft
(Let love be your sea-star!), to voyage no more.
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
LVII
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
LXIII
A beautiful child is mine,
Formed like a golden flower,
Cleis the loved one.
And above her I value
Not all the Lydian land, 5
Nor lovely Hellas.
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
What the west wind whispers
At the end of summer,
When the barley harvest
Ripens to the sickle,
Who can tell? 5
LXVII
LXVIII
You ask how love can keep the mortal soul
Strong to the pitch of joy throughout the years.
LXIX
LXX
LXXI
LXXII
LXXIII
LXXIV
If death be good,
Why do the gods not die?
If life be ill,
Why do the gods still live?
If love be naught, 5
Why do the gods still love?
If love be all,
What should men do but love?
LXXV
Tell me what this life means,
O my prince and lover,
With the autumn sunlight
On thy bronze-gold head?
LXXVI
LXXVII
LXXVIII
LXXIX
LXXX
LXXXI
LXXXII
LXXXIV
LXXXV
LXXXVI
LXXXVIII
LXXXIX
Where shall I look for thee,
Where find thee now,
O my lost Atthis?
Loving as ever
And glad as of old,
My own lost Atthis! 30
XC
XCI
XCIII
XCIV
XCV
XCVI
XCVII
XCVIII
What premonition,
O purple swallow, 10
Told thee the happy
Hour of migration?
Hark! On the threshold
(Hush, flurried heart in me!),
Was there a footfall? 15
Did no one enter?
EPILOGUE
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