You in with fair Charaxus, fair no more.
But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song,
Will make your name a word for all to learn,
And all to love thereafter, even while
It’s but a name; and this will be as long
As there are distant ships that will return
Again to your Naucratis and the Nile.
There is little of Sappho except in name in Agnes Kendrick Gray’s verses[185] or in those of William Alexander Percy.[186] Harry Kemp is thinking of Byron rather than Sappho herself when he says that the lines, “the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sung,” went to his soul like a white hot iron. There is more in George Horton,[187] who in the last poem on Sappho which I have seen from his pen has a refrain on “bitter-sweet.” Mr. Horton forgets that we do know that Pittacus, (see illustration [Pl. 2]) was “lord of Lesbos’ isle,” but the general sentiment is true all the same:
BALLADE OF SAPPHO’S FAME
Oh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isle