She weeping turned away, and said,]
‘Oh, my sweet mother, ’tis in vain,
I cannot weave, as once I wove,
So wildered is my heart and brain
With thinking of that youth I love.’
Many fragments deal with the Greek myths. Sappho is one of the first to tell the story of Adonis, who has his analogy in Phaon. “Woe for Adonis” (E. 25); “Woe for him of the four months’ sojourn, Woe for Adonis” (E. 136 uncertain restoration). Another fragment is presumed to be Sappho’s and, probably, to be part of a song sung at the Mytilenaean spring-festival of the marriage of Adonis and Aphrodite, of whose counterpart at Alexandria we have an example in the fifteenth idyl of Theocritus, so well translated by Matthew Arnold:
Maidens. Sweet Adonis lies a-dying, Cytherea; what’s to do?
Cytherea. Beat your breasts and rend your garments, maids, is my behest to you.
(Edmonds)