The Poems of Sappho

An Interpretative Rendition into English

BY

JOHN MYERS O'HARA

PORTLAND: MDCCCCX

SAPPHO AND HER COMPANIONS

Contents

Who shall strike the wax of mystery from those pricelessamphoræ, and give to the unsophisticated nostrils of the averagereader the ravishing bouquet of wine pressed in a garden inMitylene, twenty-five centuries ago?—MAURICE THOMPSON.

Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I, too,
Full of the vision,

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
Shone Mitylene.

—SWINBURNE.

Ω θεόί, πίς ἆρα Κύπρις, ἢ τίς μερος
τοῡδε ξνυήψατο

—SOPHOCLES.

SAPPHICS

THE MUSES

Hither now, O Muses, leaving the golden
House of God unseen in the azure spaces,
Come and breathe on bosom and brow and kindle
Song like the sunglow;

Come and lift my shaken soul to the sacred
Shadow cast by Helicon's rustling forests;
Sweep on wings of flame from the middle ether,
Seize and uplift me;

Thrill my heart that throbs with unwonted fervor,
Chasten mouth and throat with immortal kisses,
Till I yield on maddening heights the very
Breath of my body.

MUSAGETES

Come with Musagetes, ye Hours and Graces,
Dance around the team of swans that attend him
Up Parnassian heights, to his holy temple
...