Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho

by Sappho

‘In all honesty, I want to die.’ Leaving for good after a good long cry, She said: ‘We both have suffered terribly, But, Sappho, it is hard to say goodbye.’ I said: ‘Go with my blessing if you go Always remembering what we did. To me You have meant everything, as you well know. ‘Yet, lest it slip your mind, I shall review Everything we have shared – the good times, too: ‘You culled violets and roses, bloom and stem, Often in spring and I looked on as you Wove a bouquet into a diadem. ‘Time and again we plucked lush flowers, wed Spray after spray in strands and fastened them Around your soft neck; you perfumed your head ‘Of glossy curls with myrrh – lavish infusions In queenly quantities – then on a bed Prepared with fleecy sheets and yielding cushions, ‘Sated your craving…’

Moon and the Pleiades go down. Midnight and tryst pass by. I, though, lie Alone. Peace, you never seemed so tedious As now – no, never quite like this. Over eyelids dark night fell Invisible.

Now she outshines those dames with Lydian faces Just as, when the sun Has set, the rosy-fingered Moon surpasses The stars surrounding her. With equal grace She casts her lustre on The flower-rich fallows and the sterile seas.

I loved you once, years ago, Atthis, When your flower was in place. You seemed a gawky girl then, artless, Without grace. Atthis, you looked at what I was And hated what you saw And now, all in a flutter, chase After Andromeda.