Oh! canst thou bear to see this faded frame
Deformed and mangled by the rocky deep?
Wilt thou remember, and forbear to weep,
My fatal fondness and my peerless fame?
Soon o'er this heart, now warm with passion's flame,
The howling winds and foamy waves shall sweep—
These eyes be ever closed in death's cold sleep,
And all of Sappho perish, but her name!
Yet, if the Fates suspend their barbarous ire,
If days less mournful, Heaven designs for me,
If rocks grow kind, and winds and waves conspire
To bear me softly on the swelling sea—

Ah, is there no, no place on earth
Where weary souls can rest?
Are none who spring from mortal birth
With perfect bliss e'er blest?

Or shall we be forever longing—
Be with wants and wishes filled;
Craving things to earth belonging,
Not the things that God hath willed?

Oh! how weary, weary, weary,
And how long doth seem the day,
When too sad, and lone and dreary,
Plod we on our toilsome way?

With not one, not one to love us,
How can we of bliss e'er dream?
Of the blissful heaven above as
Can we ever catch a gleam?

Yes, I will go, where circling whirlwinds rise,
Where threatening clouds in sable grandeur lour;
Where the blast yells, the liquid columns pour,
And maddening billows combat with the skies!
There, while the Demon of the Tempest flies
On growing pinions through the troublous hour,
The wild waves gasp impatient to devour,
And on the rock the wakened vulture cries!
Oh! dreadful solace to the stormy mind—
To me, more pleasing than the valley's rest,
The woodland songsters, or the sportive kind
That nip the turf, or prune the painted crest;

On the low margin of a murmuring stream,
As rapt in meditation's arms I lay,
Each aching sense in slumbers stole away,
While potent fancy formed a soothing dream.
O'er the Leucadian deep, a dazzling beam
Shed the bland light of empyrean day—
But soon transparent shadows veiled each ray,
While mystic visions sprang athwart the gleam!
Now to the heaving gulf they seemed to bend,
And now across the sphery regions glide;
Now in mid-air their dulcet voices blend:
‘Awake! awake!’ the restless phalanx cried,
‘See ocean yawns the lover's woes to end;

Prepare your wreaths, Aonian maids divine,
To strew the tranquil bed where I shall sleep;
In tears, the myrtle and the laurel steep,
And let Erato's hand the trophies twine.
No Parian marble there, with laboured line
Shall bid the wandering lover stay to weep;
There holy silence shall her vigils keep
Save when the nightingale such woes as mine
Shall sadly sing; as twilight's curtains spread,
There shall the branching lotus widely wave,
Sprinkling soft showers upon the lily's head,
Sweet drooping emblem for a lover's grave!

Oh sigh, thou stealest (the herald of the breast)
The lover's fears, the lover's pangs, to tell;
Thou bidst with timid grace the bosom swell,
Cheating the day of joy, the night of rest!
Oh lucid tears, with eloquence confessed,
Why on my fading cheek unheeded dwell,
Meek as the dew-drops on the flowret's bell
By ruthless tempests to the green-sod pressed.
Fond sigh, be hushed! Congeal, oh slighted tear—
Thy feeble powers the busy Fates control!
Or if thy crystal streams again appear,
Let them, like Lethe's, to oblivion roll—

When, in the gloomy mansion of the dead,
This withering heart, this faded form shall sleep;
When these fond eyes at length shall cease to weep,
And earth's cold lap receive this feverish head—
Envy shall turn away, a tear to shed,
And Time's obliterating pinions sweep
The spot where poets shall their vigils keep
To mourn and wander near my freezing bed!
Then my pale ghost upon the Elysian shore
Shall smile, released from every mortal care,
While (doomed love's victim to repine no more)
My breast shall bathe in endless rapture there—

Lead me, Sicilian maids, to haunted bowers,
While yon pale moon displays her faintest beams
O'er fading woodlands, and enchanted streams
Whose banks infect the breeze with poisonous flowers.
Ah, lead me where the barren mountain towers,
Where no sounds echo, but the night-owl's screams;
Where some lone spirit of the desert gleams,
And lurid horrors wing the fateful hours!
Now goaded frenzy grasps my shrinking brain,
Her touch absorbs the crystal fount of woe!
My blood rolls burning through each bursting vein:
Away, lost lyre—unless thou canst bestow

What means the mist opaque that veils these eyes?
Why does yon threatening tempest shroud the day?
Why does thy altar, Venus, fade away,
And on my breast the dews of horror rise?
Phaon is false! Be dim, ye orient skies,
And let black Erebus succeed your ray!
Let clashing thunders roll, and lightnings play—
Phaon is false! and hopeless Sappho dies!
‘Farewell, my Lesbian love’, you might have said
(Such sweet remembrance had some pity proved),
Or coldly thus, ‘Farewell, oh Lesbian maid’—
No task severe for one so fondly loved!

Ah, I know what happiness is …!
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I'm through with it …
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is …!
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem …
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy …
I've played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.