[32] The text is from the edition of 1786. The 1795 edition has the note "anno 1769."
THE MONUMENT OF PHAON[33]
Written 1770.
Phaon, the admirer of Sappho, both of the isle of Lesbos, privately forsook this first object of his affections, and set out to visit foreign countries. Sappho, after having long mourned his absence (which is the subject of one of Ovid's finest epistles), is here supposed to fall into the company of Ismenius a traveller, who informs her that he saw the tomb of a certain Phaon in Sicily, erected to his memory by a lady of the island, and gives her the inscriptions, hinting to her that, in all probability, it belonged to the same person she bemoans. She thereupon, in a fit of rage and despair, throws herself from the famous Leucadian rock, and perishes in the gulph below.
Sappho
No more I sing by yonder shaded stream,
Where once intranc'd I fondly pass'd the day,
Supremely blest, when Phaon was my theme,
But wretched now, when Phaon is away!
Of all the youths that grac'd our Lesbian isle
He, only he, my heart propitious found,
So soft his language, and so sweet his smile,
Heaven was my own when Phaon clasp'd me round!
But soon, too soon, the faithless lover fled
To wander on some distant barbarous shore—
Who knows if Phaon is alive or dead,
Or wretched Sappho shall behold him more.