The Complete Poems

by Sappho

As Ovid put it, “What did Sappho of Lesbos teach but how to love women?” (Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?)

To the church mind, Sappho represented the culmination of moral laxity, and her work was treated with extreme disapproval. About 380 C.E., Saint Gregory of Nazianzos, bishop of Constantinople, ordered the burning of Sappho’s writings wherever found. She had already been violently attacked as early as 180 C.E. by the Assyrian ascetic Tatian: “Sappho was a whorish woman, love-crazy, who sang about her own licentiousness.”8 Then in 391 a mob of Christian zealots partially destroyed Ptolemy Soter’s classical library in Alexandria. The often repeated story of the final destruction of this famous library by the Arab general ‘Amr ibn al-‘Āṣ and Caliph ‘Umar I is now rejected by historians. Again we hear that in 1073 Sappho’s writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VII. Until late in the eleventh century, however, quotations from Sappho still appeared in the works of grammarians, suggesting that copies of her poems were still preserved. We will never know how many poems by Sappho were destroyed in April 1204 during the terrible pillage of Constantinople by the Venetian knights of the Fourth Crusade, or by the Ottoman Turks at the fall of Byzantium in 1453.

Death of Adonis Afroditi, delicate Adonis is dying. What should we do? Virgins, beat your breasts and tear your garments.

Artemis blame delicate Artemis

Earth Earth is embroidered with rainbow-colored garlands

World I could not hope to touch the sky with my two arms

Eos Lady Dawn

Words with Virginity Virginity, virginity, where have you gone, leaving me abandoned? No longer will I come to you. No longer will I come.

Seizure To me he seems equal to gods, the man who sits facing you and hears you near as you speak softly and laugh in a sweet echo that jolts the heart in my ribs. Now when I look at you a moment my voice is empty and can say nothing as my tongue cracks and slender fire races under my skin. My eyes are dead to light, my ears pound, and sweat pours over me. I convulse, greener than grass and feel my mind slip as I go close to death. Yet I must suffer, even poor [31]

Absence I long and yearn for

Shall I? I don’t know what to do. I think yes—and then no.

Pleasure On a soft pillow I will lay down my limbs

Absent Away from her yet she became like gods sinful Andromeda a blessed one didn’t hold back her insolence sons of Tyndareus gracious no longer innocent Megara

Paralysis Sweet mother, now I cannot work the loom. Sleek Afroditi broke me with longing for a boy.

Sleep May you sleep on your tender girlfriend’s breasts

Innocence I am not of a wounding spirit rather I have a gentle heart