“Immortal Venus, throned above
In radiant beauty, child of Jove,
O skilled in every art of love
And artful snare;
Dread power, to whom I bend the knee,
Release my soul and set it free
From bonds of piercing agony
And gloomy care.”
We may perhaps without presumption ask whether the sense is not given more faithfully, in a more natural English form and rhythm, and in a shape sufficiently reminiscent of the original stanza, in the twenty-three words which follow—
“Guile-weaving child of Zeus, who art
Immortal, throned in radiance, spare,
O Queen of Love, to break my heart
With grief and care.”
Keeping to the same principles of strict compression and strict simplicity we may thus continue with the remainder of the poem—
“But hither come, as thou of old,
When my voice reached thine ear afar,
Didst leave thy father’s hall of gold,
And yoke thy car,
And through mid air their whirring wing
Thy bonny doves did swiftly ply
O’er the dark earth, and thee did bring
Down from the sky.
Right soon they came, and thou, blest Queen,
A smile upon thy face divine,
Didst ask what ail’d me, what might mean
That call of mine.
‘What would’st thou have, with heart on fire,
Sappho?’ thou saidst. ‘Whom pray’st thou me
To win for thee to fond desire?
Who wrongeth thee?
Soon shall he seek, who now doth shun;
Who scorns thy gifts, shall gifts bestow;
Who loves thee not, shall love anon,
Wilt thou or no.’
So come thou now, and set me free
From carking cares; bring to full end
My heart’s desire; thyself O be
My stay and friend!”
The perfection of the Greek style is fine simplicity. We must not say that this characteristic perfection is more absolutely displayed in Sappho than in Homer or Sophocles. It is, however, illustrated by Sappho in that region of verse which pre-eminently demands it, the lyric of personal emotion. There may be, with different persons and at different dates, wide differences of interest in regard to the themes and structures of the epic, the drama, or the triumphal ode. Most forms of poetry must some time cease to find full appreciation, because of the peculiar ideas and conventions of their time and place. But the poetry of the primal and eternal passions of the human heart, of its experiences and its emotions, carries with it those touches which make the whole world kin. Love and sorrow are re-born with every human being. Time and civilisation make little difference. But those touches are only weakened by far-sought words and elaborate metres, by recondite conceits and ambitious psychology.
Perhaps the woman who seeks to come nearest to Sappho in poetry is Mrs. Browning, but she falls far short of her predecessor, not only through inferior mastery of form, but also through an excessive “bookishness” of thought. The poet moves by—
“High and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.”
In the case of songs whose theme is what Sappho calls the “bitter sweet” of love, their proper style has been determined by the gathering consensus of humanity, and it is a style simple but powerful, with a magic recurring in cadences easy to grasp and too affecting to forget. It is the style of “Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,” not of the Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day. Sappho’s songs fulfil all the conditions, and even of her fragments that is true which her imitator Horace said of her completer poems, as he more happily possessed them—
“Still breathes the love, still lives the fire
Imparted to the Lesbian’s lyre.”