And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Sappho’s last verse also reminds us of Horace’s Oceano dissociabili[91] and Tennyson’s “bond-breaking sea.” Fragment E. 41 refers to the mariner at sea in a storm; and E. 66 pictures a beautiful scene on the sea, where “Hector and his comrades bring from sacred Thebe and everflowing Placia, by ship upon the briny sea, the dainty Andromache of the glancing eye.” (Edmonds)
Sappho’s verses are full of color, of bright and beautiful things. She ranks with Pindar in her special devotion to gold, not for its value but for its fine amber lustre and its permanency (E. 110). The Cyprian queen of love sits on a throne of rich color and splendor, with inlaid wood or metal (E. 1); she “dispenses the nectar of love in beakers of gold” in what was perhaps the introductory poem of Sappho’s Wedding-Songs (E. 6):
Come thou, foam-born Kypris, and pour in dainty
Cups of amber gold thy delicate nectar
Subtly mixed with fire that will swiftly kindle
Love in our bosoms.
(O’Hara’s Love’s Banquet)
Aphrodite wears a golden coronal (E. 9), is herself golden (E. 157), and her handmaid is golden-shining (E. 24). The Muses are golden (E. 11), perhaps also the Nereids (E. 36). They have a golden house (E. 129):