Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
Hearing, to hear them.
In the face of so much testimony to Sappho's genius, and in the presence of every glowing word of hers that has been spared to us, those 'grains of golden sand which the torrent of Time has carried down to us,' as Professor F. T. Palgrave says, there is no need for me to panegyrise the poetess whom the whole world has been long since contented to hold without a parallel. What Sappho wrote, to earn such unchallenged fame, we can only vainly long to know; what still remains for us to judge her by, I am willing to leave my readers to estimate.
I
IN SAPPHIC METRE
1
Ποικιλόθρον', ἀθάνατ' Ἀφρόδιτα,
παῖ Δίος, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε
μή μ' ἄσαισι μήτ' ὀνίαισι δάμνα,