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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The stars around the wide moon lose all their shining beauty, as she illuminates the whole earth with silver.
Just then golden-sandalled Dawn called…
If you had wished for good or noble things, rather than use your tongue for wicked speech, shame would not have shown from your eyes, though you spoke with honesty.
Face me, loved one; and unveil the beauty in your eyes.
I believe men will remember us in the future.
I do not know what to do: I have two minds.
Now Eros stirs my soul, a mountain wind overwhelming the oak trees.
The moon and the Pleiades set; it is midnight. Time passes and I lie alone.
And murky-eyed Sleep, the child of Night.
For if you love me, choose another, younger spouse, for I will not suffer to live with you, as an old woman with a young man.
Der Rosenkavalier.
Raise high the roof beams, workers! Hymenaeus! Like Ares, here comes the bridgroom! Hymenaeus! Taller than the tallest men! Hymenaeus!
J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof-beams Carpenters.
A tale tells how Tithonus was once smitten by rose-armed Dawn, whom he carried off to the world’s end. He was handsome and young then, but eventually grey age overcame him, the husband of an immortal wife.
Gregory Nazianzen,
Perhaps the most perilous and the most alluring venture in the whole field of poetry is that which Mr. Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us in English verse those lost poems of Sappho of which fragments have survived. The task is obviously not one of translation or of paraphrasing, but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction.
“Child of the earth, 10 Behold, all things are born and attain, But only as they desire, — “The sun that is strong, the gods that are wise, The loving heart, Deeds and knowledge and beauty and joy, — 15 But before all else was desire.”
The courtyard of her house is wide And cool and still when day departs. Only the rustle of leaves is there And running water. And then her mouth, more delicate 5 Than the frail wood-anemone, Brushes my cheek, and deeper grow The purple shadows.
“Who was Atthis?” men shall ask, When the world is old, and time Has accomplished without haste The strange destiny of men. Haply in that far-off age 5 One shall find these silver songs, With their human freight, and guess What a lover Sappho was.
Till the dawn came in with golden sandals.
For I am eager, and the flame of life Burns quickly in the fragile lamp of clay. 10 Passion and love and longing and hot tears Consume this mortal Sappho, and too soon A great wind from the dark will blow upon me, And I be no more found in the fair world, For all the search of the revolving moon 15 And patient shine of everlasting stars.
the sea, whose cadence Haunts the world for ever.”
“In a land that knows not Bitterness nor sorrow, She has found out all 15 Of truth at last.”
“Trust not the future with its perilous chance; The fortunate hour is on the dial now. “To-day be wise and great, And put off hesitation and go forth 5 With cheerful courage for the diurnal need.
the peach on the bough,
This might be an anachronism for Sappho's time.
ALCUSÆUS
Alcaeus (?)
