In all the fragments, new or old, there is an indefinable quality of personal feeling. Sappho, it has been said, has left us only a fragment of her work, but it is a fragment of her soul. Her friend and rival, Alcæus, is a great poet, but he lacks the fiery intensity of her inspiration, which gives life even to the briefest phrase that some grammarian has quoted for a rare word. Take the lines that Rossetti adapted:
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon topmost bough,
A-top on the topmost twig—which the pluckers forget somehow,
Forget it not—nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.
Like the wild hyacinth flower, which on the hills is found,
Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.
Or, again, this other:
Dead, dead.—In death,