Childe Harold hail’d Leucadia’s cape afar;
...
But when he saw the evening star above
Leucadia’s far-projecting rock of woe,
And hail’d the last resort of fruitless love,
He felt, or deem’d he felt, no common glow.
While Shelley and Keats do not have clear echoes of Sappho, they come nearer to her in spirit than any other modern poets; but, even so, Keats’ sensuousness removes him from Sappho. W. L. Courtney, in a very interesting article on Sappho and Aspasia,[178] says: “Shelley has the true lyrical note, and Keats some of that chiselled loveliness which makes each Sapphic stanza a masterpiece.” One might even suspect that Shelley knew the second ode, at least in some secondary source, when he composed To Constantia Singing.
Women poets naturally have taken an interest in Sappho. Mrs. Hemans, the English lyrist (1793-1835), speaks of “Sappho’s fervent heart.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning seems to have known only the song of the rose to which we have referred above ([p. 68]). She is familiar with the Lover’s Leap legend, as was Byron, for she speaks in A Vision of Poets of
—Sappho, with that gloriole
Of ebon hair on calmèd brows—