The dreams that we one day have known
But lost unspoken, faded wholly.
O Sappho, thou dost know alone
How clearly in uncounted masses
Still unreached flowers yet are grown
Where life through the charmed grotto passes.
XII. SAPPHO’S INFLUENCE ON MUSIC
On the operatic stage Sappho has had much influence; and above I have told how Lamartine said that Sappho was a superb subject for an opera, although he never wrote the opera, and how Grillparzer was asked to write an opera on Sappho. In French we have a lyrical tragedy, Sapho, by Empis and Courniol (1818), Delavault’s Sapho and Gounod’s Sapho (1851); and a few years ago (1897) Massenet produced his Sapho. In Italian there is Pacini’s Saffo (Naples 1840); in Dutch, Bree’s Sapho; in German, Schwartzendorf’s Sappho and Kanne’s Sappho; in Bohemian, there is Reicha’s Sappho; and in Russian, Lissenko’s Sappho.