Classic Poem

Just the gods are, and they were not willing
Any heart should bear a double burden.
So it is that, when they gave to woman
Love and its anguish.

Man they made the singer and the seer,
Laid on him the burden of the message,
Bade him voice the gladness and the travail
Borne by the world-soul.

So man sang; but ever, as they listened,
Something lacked, some depth of pain unfathomed,
Some starred height of self-outsoaring rapture
He could not compass.

Something too they missed of patient, lowly
Insight into being unawakened,
Fellowship with root and stalk and tendril,
Shadow and silence;

Missed the lore of soul outrunning insight,
Oneness with all Nature's tendernesses,
Mother-love bending o'er earth as o'er her
Slumbering infant.

Melodies they missed of spheral music,
Thrilling men's hearts to no strain responsive,
Harmonies of heaven that, rolling earthward,
Wakened no echo.

So sometimes the gods on hearts of women
Lay of love and song the double burden;
Such the fatal dower of Lesbian Sappho,
Telian Erinna.

Still of Sappho lisp Leucadian surges,
Still the distaff murmurs of Erinna;
But their charge the gods in love and pity
Lay on the living.

Thee to-day we crown with love and praises,
Thee who long this load hast borne and bearest;
One in fate with them of old, we hail thee
One in the triumph!