"Will it not one day in heaven repent you?
Will they solace you wholly the days that were?
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet me and see where the great lane is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you.
The gait is strait. I shall not be there."
No, never would he take her back. Whether the incident of her asking to be restored to his affections happened or not is unimportant, relatively. Sappho prayed to Aphrodite to reverse the situation of her love and make the rejecting lover come to her suppliant; a situation that every suffering lover wants, and as we know, very often happens.
One of the finest poems inspired by his love, "his sleek black pantheress," is the poem called "At a Month's End," published in 1878 in the second series of Poems and Ballads. He recalls the old days and his grief is not now so maddening. He sighs:
"Should Love disown or disesteem you
For loving one man more or less?