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Sappho

· Digby Mackworth Dolben: From Sappho · FELICIA HEMANS: The last song of Sappho · Sappho: Sleep, darling

Digby Mackworth Dolben: From Sappho

From Sappho

Thou liest dead, lie on: of thee
No sweet remembrances shall be,
Who never plucked Pierian rose,
Who never chanced on Anteros.
Unknown, unnoticed, there below
Through Aides’ houses shalt thou go
Alone, for never a flitting ghost
Shall find in thee a lover lost.

Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848 – 1867)
From Sappho

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Digby Mackworth Dolben, Sappho


FELICIA HEMANS: The last song of Sappho

sappho-fdm

Felicia Hemans
The last song of Sappho

Sound on, thou dark unslumbering sea!
My dirge is in thy moan;
My spirit finds response in thee,
To its own ceaseless cry–’Alone, alone !’

Yet send me back one other word,
Ye tones that never cease !
Oh ! let your secret caves be stirr’d,
And say, dark waters! will ye give me peace?

Away! my weary soul hath sought
In vain one echoing sigh,
One answer to consuming thought
In human hearts–and will the wave reply ?

Sound on, thou dark, unslumbering sea!
Sound in thy scorn and pride !
I ask not, alien world, from thee,
What my own kindred earth hath still denied.

And yet I loved that earth so well,
With all its lovely things!
–Was it for this the death-wind fell
On my rich lyre, and quench’d its living strings?

–Let them lie silent at my feet !
Since broken even as they,
The heart whose music made them sweet,
Hath pour’d on desert-sands its wealth away.

Yet glory’s light hath touch’d my name,
The laurel-wreath is mine–
–With a lone heart, a weary frame–
O restless deep ! I come to make them thine !

Give to that crown, that burning crown,
Place in thy darkest hold!
Bury my anguish, my renown,
With hidden wrecks, lost gems, and wasted gold.

Thou sea-bird on the billow’s crest,
Thou hast thy love, thy home;
They wait thee in the quiet nest,
And I, the unsought, unwatch’d-for–I too come!

I, with this winged nature fraught,
These visions wildly free,
This boundless love, this fiery thought–
Alone I come–oh ! give me peace, dark sea!

 

Felicia Hemans (1793 – 1835)
The last song of Sappho
fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Archive G-H, Archive S-T, CLASSIC POETRY, Sappho


Sappho: Sleep, darling

Sappho

(c. 630–570 b.c.)

 

Sleep, darling

 

Sleep, darling

I have a small

daughter called

Cleis, who is

like a golden

flower

I wouldn’t

take all Croesus’

kingdom with love

thrown in, for her

Don’t ask me what to wear

I have no embroidered

headband from Sardis to

give you, Cleis, such as

I wore

and my mother

always said that in her

day a purple ribbon

looped in the hair was thought

to be high style indeed

but we were dark:

a girl

whose hair is yellower than

torchlight should wear no

headdress but fresh flowers

 

Sappho

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

 

 


More in: Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Sappho


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