Classic Poem

The darkness thins to dawn
And earth, expectant,
Waits the unrisen sun.
Even now, his smile is on Olympus.
Phœbus kisses first the gods,
Then stoops to lips of men.

Where emerald Scyros gems the wave
The ruddy splendours of the dawn
Dissolve to opal; voices of the sea
Speak low farewells to night,
And breezes play among
The cypresses and sycamores.

The northern path we take,
Between the oleanders and the sea,
For there the way is dewless
And from thence are seen afar
The ramparts of old Ilium.

Read to me now, Erinna dear,
Thy latest lay . . . . . . .

Dear daughter of the sacred nine,
Thou singest tender cadences
Like zephyrs out of Eden.
Anon, the thought leaps from thy page
Upon my soul with such a passion
I could almost weep.
Thy vision far outstrips
The bards of Israel.
Such stateliness and majesty
Befit the toils of Herakles,
The deeds of Diomed.
Sonorous tumults rouse the sense
As when the hurricane
Roars down the skies
And shakes the ocean to white foam
Around those crags
Where Pelion and Ossa rise
In monumental calm.

Such is thine art,
But would I show the charm of thee,
Then must I paint a lovely dream
Of veilèd beauty through deep
Backgrounds stealing;
Must breathe the fragrance of the air
At the day's crimson dawn;
Must bend across the misty skies
A rainbow of bright prophecy,
And bury sorrow in a lotus grave.
Thy day of life shall glorious be;
I see the rays of an imperishable dawn;
I hear an ultra-tonal harmony
That moves me like the voice
Of singing waters,—
A massive undertone,
The sum of all those immortalities
That swell the great antiphonal of life.

A mist o'erspreads the ocean
With ghostly shroud
Like some weird shadow of myself,
A spectre of my happier years
That in the vastness of the gloom
Is my companion.

Fame lures my soul no more;
In thy young love more happy I
Than all the gods of Elis.
Let others choose the world
And all its torturing vanities;
Let me forever sing.

But now, farewell awhile
To Homer's land,
Enrobed by years and dreams
And soothed by crooning Time:
The sun rides up the sea
And Lesbos keeps a holiday.

The Tyrant wills thy presence at the games,
And jealously connives my absence
For his pride is surfeited
By Alcæus' flattery.
But thou shalt see me there!
Our smiles shall kiss across the light
When Sappho's name
From Mytelene's throat shall ring
And beat a myriad music on the air
Stabbing the envious heart of Pittacus
With rage, but gladdening thine
Whose love is constant as the sun
That flames the bosom of the sea.
Not boastingly I dare his frown,
But for my deep, undying love of thee.

Hark how the herald birds
Blow tiny trumpets to announce the day!