The Poems of Sappho

An Interpretative Rendition into English

BY

JOHN MYERS O'HARA

PORTLAND: MDCCCCX

SAPPHO AND HER COMPANIONS

Contents

Who shall strike the wax of mystery from those priceless amphoræ, and give to the unsophisticated nostrils of the average reader the ravishing bouquet of wine pressed in a garden in Mitylene, twenty-five centuries ago?—MAURICE THOMPSON.

Then to me so lying awake a vision Came without sleep over the seas and touched me, Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I, too, Full of the vision, Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; Saw the reluctant Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her, Looking always, looking with necks reverted Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder Shone Mitylene. —SWINBURNE.

Ω θεόί, πίς ἆρα Κύπρις, ἢ τίς μερος τοῡδε ξνυήψατο —SOPHOCLES.