Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics by Bliss Carman (best books to read TXT) 📕

the window the white sails come in, 5
Bearing what unknown ventures safe to port!

So falls the hour of twilight and of love
With wizardry to loose the hearts of men,

And there is nothing more in this great world
Than thou and I, and the blue dome of dusk. 10

LXXXIII

In the quiet garden world,
Gold sunlight and shadow leaves
Flicker on the wall.

And the wind, a moment since,
With rose-petals strewed the path 5
And the open door.

Now the moon-white butterflies
Float across the liquid air,
Glad as in a dream;

And, across thy lover's heart, 10
Visions of one scarlet mouth
With its maddening smile.

LXXXIV

Soft was the wind in the beech-trees;
Low was the surf on the shore;
In the blue dusk one planet
Like a great sea-pharos shone.

But nothing to me were the sea-sounds, 5
The wind and the yellow star,
When over my breast the banner
Of your golden hair was spread.

LXXXV

Have you heard the news of Sappho's garden,
And the Golden Rose of Mitylene,
Which the bending brown-armed rowers lately
Brought from over sea, from lonely Pontus?

In a meadow by the river Halys, 5
Where some wood-god hath the world in keeping,
On a burning summer noon they found her,
Lovely as a Dryad, and more tender.

Her these eyes have seen, and not another
Shall behold, till time takes all things goodly, 10
So surpassing fair and fond and wondrous,—
Such a slave as, worth a great king's ransom,

No man yet of all the sons of mortals
But would lose his soul for and regret not;
So hath Beauty compassed all her children 15
With the cords of longing and desire.

Only Hermes, master of word music,
Ever yet in glory of gold language
Could ensphere the magical remembrance
Of her melting, half sad, wayward beauty, 20

Or devise the silver phrase to frame her,
The inevitable name to call her,
Half a sigh and half a kiss when whispered,
Like pure air that feeds a forge's hunger.

Not a painter in the Isles of Hellas 25
Could portray her, mix the golden tawny
With bright stain of poppies, or ensanguine
Like the life her darling mouth's vermilion,

So that, in the ages long hereafter,
When we shall be dust of perished summers, 30
Any man could say who found that likeness,
Smiling gently on it, "This was Gorgo!"

LXXXVI

Love is so strong a thing,
The very gods must yield,
When it is welded fast
With the unflinching truth.

Love is so frail a thing, 5
A word, a look, will kill.
Oh lovers, have a care
How ye do deal with love.

LXXXVII

Hadst thou, with all thy loveliness, been true,
Had I, with all my tenderness, been strong,
We had not made this ruin out of life,
This desolation in a world of joy,
  My poor Gorgo. 5

Yet even the high gods at times do err;
Be therefore thou not overcome with woe,
But dedicate anew to greater love
An equal heart, and be thy radiant self
  Once more, Gorgo. 10

LXXXVIII

As, on a morn, a traveller might emerge
From the deep green seclusion of the hills,
By a cool road through forest and through fern,
Little frequented, winding, followed long
With joyous expectation and day-dreams, 5
And on a sudden, turning a great rock
Covered with frondage, dark with dripping water,
Behold the seaboard full of surf and sound,
With all the space and glory of the world
Above the burnished silver of the sea,— 10

Even so it was upon that first spring day
When time, that is a devious path for men,
Led me all lonely to thy door at last;
And all thy splendid beauty, gracious and glad,
(Glad as bright colour, free as wind or air, 15
And lovelier than racing seas of foam)
Bore sense and soul and mind at once away
To a pure region where the gods might dwell,
Making of me, a vagrant child before,
A servant of joy at Aphrodite's will. 20

LXXXIX

Where shall I look for thee,
Where find thee now,
O my lost Atthis?

Storm bars the harbour,
And snow keeps the pass 5
In the blue mountains.

Bitter the wind whistles,
Pale is the sun,
And the days shorten.

Close to the hearthstone, 10
With long thoughts of thee,
Thy lonely lover

Sits now, remembering
All the spent hours
And thy fair beauty. 15

Ah, when the hyacinth
Wakens with spring,
And buds the laurel,

Doubt not, some morning
When all earth revives, 20
Hearing Pan's flute-call

Over the river-beds,
Over the hills,
Sounding the summons,

I shall look up and behold 25
In the door,
Smiling, expectant,

Loving as ever
And glad as of old,
My own lost Atthis! 30

XC

A sad, sad face, and saddest eyes that ever
  Beheld the sun,
Whence came the grief that makes of all thy beauty
  One sad sweet smile?

In this bright portrait, where the painter fixed them, 5
  I still behold
The eyes that gladdened, and the lips that loved me,
  And, gold on rose,

The cloud of hair that settles on one shoulder
  Slipped from its vest. 10
I almost hear thy Mitylenean love-song
  In the spring night,

When the still air was odorous with blossoms,
  And in the hour
Thy first wild girl's-love trembled into being, 15
  Glad, glad and fond.

Ah, where is all that wonder? What god's malice
  Undid that joy
And set the seal of patient woe upon thee,
  O my lost love? 20

XCI

Why have the gods in derision
Severed us, heart of my being?
Where have they lured thee to wander,
  O my lost lover?

While now I sojourn with sorrow,