High o'er their reach in the golden air,
O sweet--O fair!"
We shall arrange the briefer fragments according to subject, not according to metre, in order that through them we may gain a clear conception of Sappho's attitude toward life and nature, that we may know the poetess in her love and friendship, her longings and her sorrows, her sensibility to the influences of nature and art.
Her conception of love has been already noticed in the longer poems just quoted. A number of the fragments indicate a similar intensity of emotion. Thus she says:
"Lo, Love once more, the limb-dissolving king,
The bitter-sweet, impracticable thing,
Wild-beast-like rends me with fierce quivering."
In another:
"Lo, Love once more my soul within me rends
Like wind that on the mountain oak descends."