Ode To Anactoria

Peer of Gods to me is the man thy presence

Crowns with joy; who hears as he sits beside thee,

Accents sweet of thy lips the silence breaking,

With lovely laughter;

Tones that make the heart in my bosom flutter,

For if I, the space of a moment even,

near to thee come, any word I would utter

Instantly fails me;

Vain my stricken tongue would a whisper fashion,

Subtly under my skin runs fire ecstatic;

Straightway mists surge dim to my eyes and leave them

Reft of their vision;

Echoes ring in my ears a trembling seizes

All my body bathed in soft perspiration;

Pale as grass I grow in my passion's madness,

Like one insensate;

But must I dare all, since to me unworthy,

Bliss thy beauty brings that a God might envy;

Never yet was fervid woman a fairer

Image of Kypris.

Ah! undying Daughter of God, befriend me!

Calm my blood that thrills with impending transport;

Feed my lips the murmur of words to stir her

Bosom to pity;

Overcome with kisses her faintest protest,

Melt her mood to mine with amorous couches,-

Till her low assent and her sigh's abandon

Lure me to rapture.

-Sappho

Remember the violet tiaras...

"I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."
— Sappho