Ah, for thy beauty, Adonis
With the soft springs and the South wind,
Love and desire!
(Bliss Carman)
Sappho’s knowledge of literature and legend is also not little. She is well acquainted with Homer, who very much influenced Sappho’s language. She knows Helen (E. 38) and her daughter Hermione (E. 44); “Hermione was never such as you are, and just it is to liken you rather to Helen than to a mortal maid.” Or take this complete letter to Anactoria (E. 38), who has eloped with a soldier to Sardis, as beautiful a poem as any of Sappho’s, if not spoiled in the last stanza by the wrong restoration of some scholars. The news of its discovery caused Mr. Osborn to leap out of bed and say he would fight for Sappho to the last with a pen dipt in poison. It reminds one of The Song of Solomon I. 9, “I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots,” or VI. 10, “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” Osborn, Mark Telfair, Marion Mills Miller, T. E. R., and others[178] have given poetic versions in Sapphics of this new poem. Another rendering seems superfluous, but I could not resist the pleasure of adding it, even though in the main less happy than its predecessors. In some of the lines the love of far-off Sappho’s meaning has lured me astray from the nearer English anapaest:
‘Fairest of sights on the dull black earth,’ some say,
‘Is a host of horse in battle array.’
‘A phalanx on foot,’ another will cry,
‘Or a navy full sail athwart the sky.’
‘But nay! ’Tis the lover’s beloved,’ I ween