It is midnight
And time slips by;
But on my couch alone I lie."
Trees and flowers and plants appeal to her as if they were endowed with life, and by her mention of them she calls up to the imagination a tropical summer with its attendant recreations. Thus she sings of the breeze murmuring cool through the apple boughs:
"From the sound of cool waters heard through the green boughs
Of the fruit-bearing trees,
And the rustling breeze,
Deep sleep, as a trance, down over me flows."
Sappho loves flowers with a personal sympathy. She feels for the hyacinth:
"As when the shepherds on the hills