Sappho

    Where rests your sail that faced so many winds?—

    (O Aphrodite, help me in this hour!)

Phaon

    There white against the blue of yonder bay.

Sappho

    It seems a little thing to creep so far

    From home and Asian shores—a little thing!

Phaon

    Bird-throated child of Lesbos—

Sappho (musingly)

                                  Yet I too

    Am frail, and I have fared on troubled seas!

Phaon

    Bird-throated child of Lesbos, let us turn

    To those dark hills of home and Long Ago

    That one great love relumes, and one lost voice

    Still like a fading lute with sorrow haunts.

Sappho

    Dear hills of sun and gloom and green—soft hills

    Ambrosial I shall see no more!

Phaon

                                 Nay, come,

    O Violet-Crowned, come back where still the girls

    Laugh ruddy-ankled round the Lesbian vats

    And swart throats from the laden galleys sing

    At eve of love and women as of old—

Sappho

    How far away those twilight voices are!

Phaon

    And down the solemn Dorian scale the pipes

    Wander and plead, then note by note awake

    Shrill with Aeolian gladness once again.

    Come back where opiate lyres shall drowse away

    This wordless hunger that has paled your face,

    Where island hills reach out their arms for you;

    Come back, and be at rest!

Sappho (turning to him)

                             O island home

    Where we were happy once!

Phaon

                            And shall again

    Be happy as of old, remembering not

    The little shower that gathered at the break

    Of dawns so blue and golden. For to you,

    Sad-hearted Alien, have I come afar

    By many lands and seas to lure you back,—

    Back where the olive groves and laughing hills

    Still glow so purple from Aeolia’s coast

    And all the harbour-lights have watched so long,

    Like weary eyes, for you to come again.

Sappho

    Yes, well I know them where their paths of gold

    Once lay like wavering music on the sea.

Phaon

    And slowly there, like wine with honey made

    Too sweet, our languid days shall flow.

Sappho

                                        O home

    Where we so long ago were happy once!

Phaon

    ’Twas but a little time I went from you,

    And I have sorrowed for it, and am wise;

    And with my wisdom, lo, the tremulous wings

    Of twilight love have now flown home again.

Sappho

    It is too late, my Phaon.

                            Your light hand

    Has crushed the silver goblet of my heart,

    And all the wine is spilt; the page is read,

    And from the tale the olden glory gone;

    The lamp has failed amid the glimmering dusk

    Of midnight; and now even music sounds

    Mournful as evening bells on seas unknown.

Phaon

    O, Lesbos waits, and still you will not come—

    Our home is calling, and you will not hear?

Sappho

    Out of my time I am, and like a bird

    On nor’land wings too early flown, I dream

    Amid the wintry cold of all the world

    Of dawns and summer rains I ne’er shall see! . . .

    Lightly you loved me, Phaon, long ago,

    And there were other arms unknown to me

    That folded over you, though none more fond

    Than mine that fell so wing-like round your head.

    And there were other eyes that drooped as mine

    Despairingly before your pleading mouth;

    And many were the nights I wept, and learned

    How sorrowful is all divided love,

    Since one voice must be lost, and being lost,

    Is then remembered most.

Phaon

                           But you alone

    It was, pale-throated woman, that I loved:

    Through outland countries have I seen your eyes,

    And like a tender flow’r through perilous ways

    Your face has gone before me, and your voice

    Across dim meadows and mysterious seas

    Has drawn me to you, calling from the dunes

    Where Summer once hung low above our hands

    And we, as children, dreamed to dreaming waves,

    And all the world seemed made for you and me.

Sappho

    It is too late; for now the wine of life

    Is spilt, the shore-lark of first love has flown,

    And all the Summer waned.

                                Yet, long ago,

    How lightly I had passed through any pain,—

    How gladly I had gone to any home,

    A wanderer with you o’er many seas;

    And slept beside your little fire content,

    And fared still on again between green hills

    And echoing valleys where the eagled pines

    Were full of gloom, and many waters sang,—

    Still on to some low plain and highland coign

    Remembered not of men, where we had made

    Our home amid the music of the hills,

    Letting life’s twilight sands glide thro’ the glass

    So golden-slow, so glad, no plaintive chime

    Could e’er be blown across autumnal eves

    From Life’s gray towers of many-tongued Regret:

    Then I had been most happy at your side,

    Easing this aching heart with homely thoughts

    And turning these sad hands to simple things.

    In the low oven that should gleam by night

    Baking my wheaten loaves, and with my wheel

    Spinning the milky wool, and light of heart

    Dipping my brazen pitcher in the spring

    That bubbled by our door.

                            And then, perchance

    (O anodyne for all dark-memoried days!),

    To feel the touch of little clinging hands

    And hold your child and mine close on this breast,

    And croon it songs and tunes quite meaningless

    Unto the bosom where no milk has been,

    And fonder than the poolside flutings low

    Of dreaming frogs to their Arcadian Pan.

    There had I borne to you a sailor-folk,

    A tawny-haired swart brood of boys, as brave

    As mine old Phaon was, cubbed by the sea

    And buffeted by wind and brume; and I,

    On winter nights when all the waves were black,

    In musing-wise had told them tales and dreams

    Of Lesbian days, e’en though the words should sound

    To my remembering heart, so far from home,

    As mournful as the wind to imprisoned men;

    —Old tales they should re-tell long ages hence

    Unto their children’s children by the fire

    When loud the dark South-West that brings the rain

    Moaned round their eaves. And in more happy days

    By some pale silver summer moon, when dim

    The waters were—mysterious eves of dusk,

    And music, stars, and silence, when the sea

    Sighs languorously as a god in sleep—

    Singing into my saddened heart should come

    White thoughts, to bloom in words as roses break

    And blow and wither and are gone; and we,

    Reckless of time, should waken not and find

    Our hearts grown old, but evermore live on

    As do the stars and Earth’s untroubled trees,

    While seasons came, like birds, and went again,—

    Though Greece and her green islands were no more,

    And all her marbled glory should go down

    Like flowers that die and fall, and one by one

    Like lamps her lofty cities should go out.

Phaon

    Your voice, like dew, falls deep in my dry heart,

    And like a bell your name swings through my dreams;

    Now all my being throbs and cries for you;

    Come back with me; but come, and I will speak

    A thousand gentle words for each poor tear

    That dimmed your eyes! Come back, and I will crown

    Your days with love so enduring it shall light

    The eternal stars to bed!

Sappho

                          Ask me no more,—

    My Phaon, you must ask me nevermore:

    Though Music pipe from Memory’s darkest pine

    Her tenderest note, all time her wings are torn;

    The assuaging founts of tears themselves have failed.

    Life to the lees I drained, and I have grown

    Too lightly wayward with its wine of love,

    Too sadly troubled with its wind of change,

    And some keen madness burns through all my blood.

    The whimpering velvet whelps of Passion once

    I warmed in my white breast, and now full-grown

    And gaunt they stalk me naked through the world;

    Too fondly now I bend unto the fierce

    Necessity of bliss, yet in each glow

    Of golden angour yearn forever toward

    Some quiet gloom where plead the nightingales

    Of lustral hope. I am a garden old

    Where drift dead blossoms now and broken dreams

    And only ghosts of old pale Sorrows walk.

    Earth, April after April, beauteous is,

    But from this body worn, yet once so fair,

    My tired eyes gaze, as from a ruined tower

    Some nesting bird looks out upon the sun.

    These vagrant feet too many homes have known

    To claim one door; all my waste heart is now

    An impregnant thing of weeds and wilful moods,

    Where even Love’s most lowly groundling ne’er

    Could creep with wearied plumes, and be at rest:

    Not now like our sad plains of Sicily,

    Pensive with happier harvests year by year

    This bosom is,—but hot as Aetna’s, torn

    And seared with all the fires of vast despairs,—

    A menace and a mockery where still brood

    On its dark heights the eagles of Unrest.

    Yet had you only loved me, who can tell

    How humble I had been, how I had tried

    From this poor broken twilight to re-build

    The Dawn, and from Love’s ashes to re-dream

    The flower.

Phaon

              I loved you then, and love you now.

    The torn plumes of the wayward wings I take,

    The ruined rose, and all the empty cruse;

    Here I accept the bitter with the sweet,

    The autumnal sorrow with the autumnal gold;

    Tears shall go unregretted, and much pain

    Gladly I take, if grief, in truth, and you

    Go hand in hand.

Sappho

                 Ask me no more! For good

    Were life, indeed, if every lonely bough

    Could lure again the migrant nightingale!

    —If all that luting music of first love

    Could be recalled down years grown desolate!

    Lightly they sing who love and are beloved;

    And men shall lightly listen; but the heart

    Forlorn of hope, that hides its wound in song,

    Remembered is through many years and lands.

    And I have wept and sung, and I have known

    So many hours of sorrow—all for you!

Phaon

    What Love remembers little things?—what wave

    Withholds itself for sighs of broken reeds?

Sappho

    The wave remembers not, till reed by reed

    The lyric shores of youth lie ruinous;

    It was not much I asked in those old days;—

    As waters come whence reeds may never see,

    So men have wider missions than we know.

    ’Tis not thro’ all their moods they hunger for

    Our poor pale faces; as a flame at sea

    They seek us in the gloom, and then forget.

    ’Tis when by dusk the battle-sweat has dried;

    ’Tis when the port is won, and wind and storm

    Are past; ’tis when the heart for solace aches;

    ’Tis when the road is lost in darkling woods,

    Or under alien stars the fire is lit

    And when strange dreams make deep the idle hour;

    Then would I have my name sing throbbingly

    Thro’ some beloved heart, soft as a bird,—

    And swing with it—swing sweet as silver bells!

    Not all your hours I hoped to see you turn

    To my poor face; but when the wayside flower

    Shone through the dust and won the softer mood,

    And when the soul aspired for better things,

    Disturbed by voices calling past the Dawn,

    I hoped your troubled eyes would seek my eyes.

    And in those days that I have cried for you

    And went uncomforted, had you returned,

    I could have washed your guilty feet with tears,

    And unto you still grown, and gone thro’ sun

    And gloom beside you, holding in my arms

    Hope’s hostage children, while I gladly felt

    The keen captivity of love re-wake

    At each light touch, and in the sweet dread bliss

    Of motherhood and most mysterious birth

    Forgot old wrongs, and starred the hills of grief

    With primrose faith and opiate asphodel.

Phaon

    Why brood on things turned ashes long ago

    When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve

    By opal eve, Earth whispers: Life is good?

Sappho

    Once I had listened to you e’er I go;—

    For like a god you seemed in those glad days

    Of droning wings and languorous afternoons,

    When close beside the murmuring sea we walked.

    Then did the odorous summer ocean seem

    A meadow green where foam one moment flowered

    And then was gone, and ever came again,

    A thousand blossom-burdened Springs in one!

    —How like a god you seemed to me; and I

    Was then most happy, and at little things

    We lightly laughed, and oftentimes we plunged

    Waist-deep and careless in the cool green waves,

    As Tethys once and Oceanus played

    Upon the golden ramparts of the world:

    Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands,

    Heavy with dreams and touched with some sad peace

    Born of our very weariness of joy,

    While drooped the wind and all the sea grew still

    And unremembered trailed the idle oar

    And no leaf moved and hushed were all the birds

    And on the dunes the thin green ripples lisped

    Themselves to sleep and sails swung dreamily,

    Where azure islands floated on the air.

    Then did your body seem a temple white

    And I a worshipper who found therein

    No god beyond the gracious marble, yet

    Most meekly kneeled, and learned that I must love.

    The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek,

    The streams of life sang thro’ your violet veins,

    The midnight velvet of your tangled hair

    Lured, as a twilight rill, my passionate hands;

    The muscles ran and rippled on your back

    Like wind on evening waters, and your arm

    Seemed one to cherish, or as sweetly crush.

    The odour of your body sinuous

    And saturate with sun and sea-air was

    As Lesbian wine to me, and all your voice

    A pain that took me back to times unknown;

    And all the ephemeral glory of the flesh,—

    The mystic sad bewilderment of warmth

    And life amid the coldness of the world

    Did seem to me so feeble on the Deep,

    Poised like a sea-bird on some tumbling crest

    As you called faintly back across the waves,

    That one must love it as a little flower—

    So strange, that one must guard it as a child.

    Some spirit of the Sea crept in our veins

    And through long immemorial afternoons

    We mused and dreamed, and wave by pensive wave

    Strange moods stole over us, and lo, we loved!

    Oh, had you gone while still that glory fell

    Like sunlight round you—had you sweetly died,

    I should have loved you now as women love

    The wonder and the silence of the West

    When with sad eyes they breathe a last farewell

    To where the black ships go so proudly out,—

    Watching with twilit faces by the Sea,

    Till down some golden rift the fading sails

    Darken and glow and pale amid the dusk,

    And gleam again, and pass into the gloom.

Phaon

    Nay, Violet-Crowned, once in our time we loved,

    The hand of that love’s ghost shall lead you back.

    Life, without you—life is an empty nest!

    A grove with god and altar lost! A lute

    Whereon no lonely fingers ever stray.

    When in the moonlight Philomela mourned

    Sad-throated for poor murdered Itylus,

    And when the day-birds woke the dewy lawn

    And white the sunlight fell across my bed

    And all the dim world turned to gold again,—

    Oft then, it seemed, the truant would come home,

    Back as a bird to its forgotten nest,

    And O the lute should find its song, and life

    Be glad again!

Sappho

              Your words but live and die

    Like desert blooms, flow’rs blown and gone again

    Where no foot ever fell.

                            I shall go Home,—

    Home, Home afar, where unknown seas forlorn

    On gloomy towers and darkling bastions foam,

    And lonely eyes look out for one dim sail

    That never comes, and men have said there is

    No sun.—And though I go forth soon no fear

    Shall cling to me, since I a thousand times

    Ere this have died, or seemed in truth to die.

    For sun by sun the grave insatiable

    Has taken to its gloom some fleeting grace,

    And day by day some glory old engulfed,

    And left me as a house untenanted.

    The unfathomed Ocean of wide Death, at most,

    And that familiar stream called sleep are one!

Phaon

    Enough of this! I need you; nay, turn back

    With me, and let one riotous flame of bliss

    Forever burn away these withered griefs

    As fire eats clean autumnal mountain-sides;

    For all this sweet sad-eyed dissuasiveness

    Endears like dew the flow’r of final love!

Sappho

    Yes, I have died ere this a thousand times;

    For on the dusky borderlands of dream

    Thro’ the dim twilight of dear summer dawns

    So darkly gold, before the hurrying hooves

    Of Apollonian pearl throbbed down the wind,

    Hearing the Lesbian birds amid green boughs

    Where tree and hill and town were touched with fire,

    —Hearing, yet hearing not, thro’ all the thin

    Near multitudinous lament of Dawn’s

    Low-rustling leaves, stirred by some opal wing,—

    Oft have I felt my pilgrim soul come home,

    For all its caging flesh a wanderer

    That in the night goes out by those stern gates

    Where five grim warders guard the body well.

    It was not I, but one long dead that woke,

    When, half in dreams, I felt this errant soul

    Once more to its tellurian cage return:

    An angel exile, looking for its lost,—

    A draggled glory, brooding for its own!

    Then faint and strange on my half-hearing ears

    There fell the flute and pipe of early birds;

    And strange the odour of the opening flowers;

    And strange the great world lay; and stranger still

    The quiet rain along the glimmering grass:

    And Earth, sad with so many memories

    Of bliss, and beautiful with vague regrets,

    Took on a poignant glory, strange as death;

    And light and water, grass, and dark-leaved trees

    Were good to look on, and most dear was life!

Phaon

    What is this dim-eyed madness and dark talk

    Of Death?

Sappho

           Hush! I have seen Death pass a hand

    Along old wounds, and they have ached no more;

    And with one little word lull pain away,

    And heal long-wasting tears.

Phaon

                             But these soft lips

    Were made not for the touch of mold.

Sappho

                                     Time was

    I thought Death stern, and scattered at his door

    My dearest roses, that his feet might come

    And softly go.

Phaon

                  This body white was made

    Not for the grave,—this flashing wonder of

    The hand for hungry worms!

Sappho

                             Oh, quiet as

    Soft rain on water shall it seem, and sad

    Only as life’s most dulcet music is,

    And dark as but a bride’s first dreaded night

    Is dark; mild, mild as mirrored stars!

                                      But you,—

    You will forget me, Phaon; there, the sting,

    The sorrow of the grave is not its green

    And the salt tear upon its violet;

    But the long years that bring the gray neglect,

    When the glad grasses smooth the little mound,—

    When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes

    And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes,

    And tears are not so bitter as they were.

    Time sings so low to our bereavèd ears,—

    So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud,

    The garden of fond Grief all empty lies

    And unregretted dip the languid oars

    Of Charon thro’ the gloom, and then are gone.

Phaon

    Red-lipped and breathing woman, made for love,

    How can this clamouring heart of mine forget?

Sappho

    You will forget, e’en though you would or no,

    And the long years shall leave you free again;

    And in some other Spring when other lips

    Let fall my name, you will remember not.

Phaon

    Enough,—but let me kiss the heavy rose

    Of your red mouth.

Sappho

                   Not until Death has kissed

    It white as these white garments, and has robed

    This body for its groom.

Phaon

                         O woman honey-pale

    And passion-worn, here to my hungering lips

    These arms shall hold you close!

Sappho

                                 You come too late;

    Forth to a sterner lover must I fare!

Phaon

    Mine flamed your first love, and shall glow your last!

Sappho

    Then meet this One, and know!

Phaon

                              The hounds of Hell

    And Aidoneus himself—

Sappho

                       Hush!

Phaon

                            You I seek!

    The sorrow of your voice enraptures me,

    And though you would elude me, still this arm

    Is strong, and this great heart as daring as

    That dusky night in Lesbos long ago!

Sappho

    Stop, son of passion,—hear!

Phaon

                               Not till these arms,

    O Oriole-throated woman, hold and fold

    About your beauty as in Lesbos once!

Sappho

    By all the hours you darkened, by the love

    You crushed and left forsaken, hear me now!

Phaon

    Thus women change! thus in their time forget!

Sappho

    There lies the sorrow—if we could forget!

    For one brief hour you gave me all the love

    That women ask, and then with cruel hands

    Set free the singing voices from the cage,

    And shook the glory from the waiting rose;

    And in life’s empty garden still I clung

    To this, and called it love, and seemed content!

    Love! Love! ’Tis we who lose it know it best!

    Love! Love! It gleams all gold and marble white

    High on the headlands of our troubled lives

    Pure as this golden temple of the Sun

    To twilit eyes; by day a luring star

    That leads our sea-worn hearts from strait to strait,

    By night a fire and solace thro’ the cold;

    Yet standing as this temple stands, a door

    To worlds mysterious, to alien things,

    And all the glory of the waiting gods!

    Love! Love! It is the blue of bluest skies;

    The farthest green of waters touched with sun!

    It is the calm of Evening’s earliest star

    And yet the tumult of most troubled tides!

    It is the frail original of things,

    A timorous flame that once half-feared the light,

    Yet, loosened, sweeps the world, consuming Time

    And tinsel empires grim with blood and war!

    It is a hostage lent of Death, that Life

    Once more in times afar may find its lost!

    It is the ache and utter loneliness

    Of wintry lands made wonderful with Spring!

    Music it is, and song, regret and tears;

    The rose upon the tomb of fleeting youth;

    The one red wine of life, that on the lip

    Of Thirst turns not to ashes!

                                Change and time

    And sorrow kneel to it, for at its touch

    The world is paved with gold, and wing by wing

    Drear autumn fields and valleys dark with rain

    Re-waken with the birds of Memory!

Phaon

    All time your words were tuned to madden men;

    And I am drunk with these sweet pleadings, soft

    As voices over many waters blown.

Sappho

    Hear me, for by those gods you fear the most

    There is a fire within me burns away

    All pity, and some Hate, half-caged, may eat

    Thro’ all its bars!

Phaon

                      Not till your mouth’s

    Sad warmth droops unto mine!

Sappho

                               Yours once I was,

    And once, indeed, I watched you tread me down

    And trample on my whitest flower of youth;

    And long amid my poor dead roses lay,

    Stifling with sorrow, and still held my peace,

    Hoping thro’ all that pain for better things.

    Down to this day I raised no voice in wrath

    But bowed my head beneath your heel, and smiled

    With quiet mouth and most unhappy eyes,

    And saw my woman’s soul go thin and starved.

    But now I warn you that the tide has turned;

    Touch nevermore these hands, for my torn heart

    Is desperate, and given not to words.

    Quite humble have I been, and duly spake

    My lips as you once tutored them to speak.

    But now this empty husk from which you drained

    Life’s darkest wine shall die in its own way,

    And whither now it will this thing you hurt

    Shall steal away, for all its broken wings.

    And now, as waters sigh and whisper through

    Some hollow-throated urn, so peace this day

    Shall steal thro’ all my veins, as I have said.

    So back! Stand back,—or if it must be, then

    Locked desperately arm in arm with me

    You shall go down, down to this crawling Deep!

Phaon

    Madness throbs thro’ her, and I fear this mood.

Sappho

    The waves are softer with their dead, and winds

    More kindly are with leaves in winter than

    Men’s cruel love, that kills and buries not!

    Naked and torn we lie beneath their feet,

    Who, had they known, in sorrow would have crept

    Thro’ griefs entombing night with what once held

    Such joys and tears for them!

    O that sound, not wind or sea,

      From no bird nor dreamland blown,

    Bearing you away from me,

      Crying: “One must go alone!”

      O that Voice, so like my own

    Calling through the gloom for thee!—

      For the love that life has known,

    For the parting yet to be!

Sappho

                             Now I shall go

    Quite gladly, with this more than anguish at

    My over-aching heart, that cries for rest:

    Yes, shade-like even now I seem,—this face

    Sea-worn as Leucothea’s lonely face,

    So wistful white at eve amid the waves

    Where with sad eyes, men say, she gazes on

    Earth’s failing hills and fields!

(She turns once more to the sea.)

                                 ’Tis good to sleep,

    And alone, sad mother Ocean, let me lie;

    Alone, gray mother, take me in your arms

    Whose earthly sorrow once was deep as yours,

    Whose passion was as vain, whose heart could sound

    Thro’ all the sweetest meadows of this world

    Only for evermore the morning lutes

    Of loneliness and most unhappy love.

    For once, in times I know not of, you too

    Have loved and sorrowed, as your heart would say,

    Mourning at dusk among your golden Isles.

    I cannot call on mine old gods, for they

    Have lived so far from Earth, they scarce would know

    The odour of my incense, nor how white

    My piteous altars stand; for as the Moon

    Smiles sadly disempassioned over men

    And their tumultuous cities crowned with song,

    Where live by night so many heavy hearts,

    So smile the gods on my pale-lipped despairs.

    On to the end these feet must walk alone,—

    Alone, once more, and unillumined, fare;

    For I am far from home to die, and far

    From any voice to comfort me beyond

    The cypress twilight and the hemlock gloom!

    Not evermore, O blue Ionian Sea,

    And vine-clad valleys, shall these eyes behold

    My Lesbos, still my first and last of loves!

    But take me, mother Ocean, while I feel

    Burn thro’ my blood this magic ecstasy!

    Take me, O take me in your cooling arms,

    And let the ablution of soft waters lave

    Old sorrows from these eyes, and wash the pain

    From this poor heart, that sinned, but suffered more!