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Moonrise
WILL you glimmer on the sea? will you fling your spearhead on the shore? what note shall we pitch? we have a song, on the bank we share our arrows; the loosed string tells our note:
O flight, bring her swiftly to our song. she is great, we measure her by the pine trees.
At Eleusis
WHAT they did, they did for Dionysos, for ecstasy’s sake:
now take the basket, think; think of the moment you count most foul in your life; conjure it, supplicate, pray to it; your face is bleak, you retract, you dare not remember it: stop; it is too late. the next stands by the altar step, a child’s face yet not innocent, it will prove adequate, but you, I could have spelt your peril at the gate, yet for your mind’s sake, though you could not enter, wait.
What they did, they did for Dionysos, for ecstasy’s sake:
Now take the basket basket (ah face in a dream, did I not know your heart, I would falter, for each that fares onward is my child; ah can you wonder that my hands shake
that my hands shake, that my knees tremble, I a mortal, set in the goddess’ place?)
Fragment Forty-one
thou flittest to Andromeda
SAPPHO
AM I blind alas, am I blind?
I too have followed her path. I too have bent at her feet. I too have wakened to pluck amaranth in the straight shaft, amaranth purple in the cup, scorched at the edge to white.
Am I blind? am I the less ready for her sacrifice? am I the less eager to give what she asks, she the shameless and radiant?
Am I quite lost, I towering above you and her glance, walking with swifter pace, with clearer sight, with intensity beside which you two are as spent ash?
Nay, I give back to the goddess the gift she tendered me in a moment of great bounty.
I return it. I lay it again on the white slab of her house, the beauty she cast out one moment, careless.
Nor do I cry out: “why did I stoop? why did I turn aside one moment from the rocks
one moment from the rocks marking the sea-path?
Aphrodite, shameless and radiant, have pity, turn, answer us.”
Ah no though I stumble toward her altar-step, though my flesh is scorched and rent, shattered, cut apart, slashed open; though my heels press my own wet life black, dark to purple, on the smooth, rose-streaked threshold of her pavement. 2
AM I blind alas, deaf too that my ears lost all this? nay, O my lover, shameless and still radiant, I tell you this:
I was not asleep, I did not lie asleep on those hot rocks while you waited. I was not unaware when I glanced out toward the sea watching the purple ships.
I was not blind when I turned. I was not indifferent when I strayed aside or loitered as we three went or seemed to turn a moment from the path for that same amaranth.
I was not dull and dead when I fell back on our couch at night. I was not indifferent when I turned and lay quiet.
I was not dead in my sleep.
3
Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say I have offered small sacrifice, say I am unworthy your touch, but say not:
“she turned to some cold, calm god, silent, pitiful, in preference.”
Lady of all beauty, I give you this: say not:
“she deserted my altar-step, the fire on my white hearth was too great, she fell back at my first glance.”
Lady, radiant and shameless, I have brought small wreaths, (they were a child’s gift,) I have offered myrrh-leaf, crisp lentisk, I have laid rose-petal and white rock-rose from the beach.
But I give now a greater, I give life and spirit with this. I render a grace no one has dared to speak, lest men at your altar greet him as slave, callous to your art; I dare more than the singer offering her lute, the girl her stained veils, the woman her swathes of birth, or pencil and chalk, mirror and unguent box
mirror and unguent box.
I offer more than the lad singing at your steps, praise of himself, his mirror his friend’s face, more than any girl, I offer you this: (grant only strength that I withdraw not my gift,) I give you my praise and this: the love of my lover for his mistress.
Telesila
IN Argos that statue of her; at her feet the scroll of her love-poetry, in her hand a helmet.
WAR is a fevered god who takes alike maiden and king and clod, and yet another one, (ah withering peril!) deprives alike, with equal skill, alike indifferently, hoar spearsman of his shaft, wan maiden of her zone, even he, Love who is great War’s very over-lord.
War bent and kissed the forehead, yet Love swift, planted on chin and tenderest cyclamen lift of fragrant mouth, fevered and honeyed breath, breathing o’er and o’er those tendrils of her hair, soft kisses like bright flowers.
Love took and laid the sweet, (being extravagant,) on lip and chin and cheek, but ah he failed even he, before the luminous eyes that dart no suave appeal,
alas, impelling me to brave incontinent, grave Pallas’ high command.
And yet the mouth! ah Love ingratiate, how was it you, so poignant, swift and sure, could not have taken all and left me free, free to desert the Argives, let them burn, free yet to turn and let the city fall: yea, let high War take all his vengeful way, for what am I? I cannot save nor stay the city’s fall.
War is a fevered god, (yet who has writ as she the power of Love?)
War bent and kissed the forehead, that bright brow, ignored the chin and the sweet mouth, for that and the low laugh were his, Eros ingratiate, who sadly missed in all the kisses count, those eyebrows and swart eyes, O valiant one who bowed falsely and vilely trapped us, traitorous lord
traitorous lord.
And yet, (remembrance mocks,) should I have bent the maiden to a kiss? Ares the lover or enchanting Love? but had I moved I feared for that astute regard; for that bright vision, how might I have erred? I might have marred and swept another not so sweet into my exile; I might have kept a look recalling many and many a woman’s look, not this alone, astute, imperious, proud.
And yet I turn and ask again, again, again, who march to death, what was it worth, reserve and pride and hurt? what is it worth to such as I who turn to meet the invincible Spartans’ massed and serried host? what had it cost, a kiss?
Fragment Sixty-eight
even in the house of Hades
SAPPHO
IENVY you your chance of death, how I envy you this. I am more covetous of him even than of your glance, I wish more from his presence though he torture me in a grasp, terrible, intense.
Though he clasp me in an embrace that is set against my will and rack me with his measure, effortless yet full of strength, and slay me in that most horrible contest, still, how I envy you your chance.
Though he pierce me imperious iron fever dust though beauty is slain when I perish, I envy you death.
What is beauty to me? has she not slain me enough, have I not cried in agony of love, birth, hate, in pride crushed?
What is left after this? what can death loose in me after your embrace? your touch, your limbs are more terrible to do me hurt.
What can death mar in me
What can death mar in me that you have not?
2
What can death send me that you have not? you gathered violets, you spoke: “your hair is not less black, nor less fragrant, nor in your eyes is less light, your hair is not less sweet with purple in the lift of lock;” why were those slight words and the violets you gathered of such worth?
How I envy you death; what could death bring, more black, more set with sparks to slay, to affright, than the memory of those first violets, the chance lift of your voice, the chance blinding frenzy as you bent?
3
So the goddess has slain me for your chance smile and my scarf unfolding as you stooped to it; so she trapped me with the upward sweep of your arm as you lifted the veil, and the swift smile and selfless.
Could I have known? nay, spare pity, though I break, crushed under the goddess’ hate, though I fall beaten at last, so high have I thrust my glance up into her presence.
Do not pity me, spare that, but how I envy you your chance of death.
Lethe
NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar-wood be over you, Nor the fir-tree Nor the pine.
Nor sight of whin nor gorse Nor river-yew, Nor fragrance of flowering bush, Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you, Nor of linnet, Nor of thrush.
Nor word nor touch nor sight Of lover, you Shall long through the night but for this: The roll of the full tide to cover you Without question, Without kiss.
Sitalkas
THOU art come at length more beautiful than any cool god in a chamber under Lycia’s far coast, than any high god who touches us not here in the seeded grass: aye, than Argestes scattering the broken leaves.
Hermonax
GODS of the sea; Ino, leaving warm meads for the green, grey-green fastnesses of the great deeps; and Palemon, bright seeker of sea-shaft, hear me.
Let all whom the sea loves, come to its altar front, and I who can offer no other sacrifice to thee bring this.
Broken by great waves, the wavelets flung it here, this sea-gliding creature, this strange creature like a weed, covered with salt foam, torn from the hillocks of rock.
I, Hermonax, caster of nets, risking chance, plying the sea craft, came on it.
Thus to sea god, gift of sea wrack; I, Hermonax, offer it to thee, Ino, and to Palemon.
Orion Dead (Artemis speaks.)
THE cornel-trees uplift from the furrows, the roots at their bases, strike lower through the barley-sprays.
So arise and face me. I am poisoned with the rage of song.
I once pierced the flesh of the wild deer, now I am afraid to touch the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths?
I will tear the full flowers and the little heads of the grape-hyacinths, I will strip the life from the bulb until the ivory layers lie like narcissus petals on the black earth.
Arise, lest I bend an ash-tree into a taut bow, and slay and tear all the roots from the earth.
The cornel-wood blazes and strikes through the barley-sprays but I have lost heart for this.
I break a staff, I break the tough branch. I know no light in the woods. I have lost pace with the wind.
Charioteer
In that manner (archaic) he finished the statue of his brother. It stands mid-way in the hall of laurels ... between the Siphnians’ offering and the famous tripod of Naxos.
