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[316] maiden, whom we may fancy lying robed for the grave, while her companions sever their tresses around her, that something of themselves may be entombed with her.

This dust was Timas'; ere her bridal hour
She lies in Proserpina's gloomy bower;
Her virgin playmates from each lovely head
Cut with sharp steel their locks, the strewments for the dead.

These are only fragments; but of the single complete poem that remains to us from Sappho, I shall venture on a translation, which can claim only to be tolerably literal, and to keep, in some degree, to the Sapphic metre. Yet I am cheered by the remark of an old grammarian, Demetrius Phalereus, that “Sappho's whole poetry is so perfectly musical and harmonious, that even the harshest voice or most awkward recital can hardly render it unpleasing to the ear.” Let us hope that the Muses may extend some such grace, even to a translation.

Hymn to Aphrodite.

Beautiful-throned, immortal Aphrodite!
Daughter of Zeus, beguiler, I implore thee,
Weigh me not down with weariness and anguish,
O thou most holy!

Come to me now! if ever thou in kindness
Hearkenedst my words,--and often hast thou hearkened,
Heeding, and coming from the mansions golden
Of thy great Father,

Yoking thy chariot, borne by thy most lovely
Consecrated birds, with dusky-tinted pinions,
Waving swift wings from utmost heights of heaven
Through the mid-ether:

Swiftly they vanished; leaving thee, O goddess,
Smiling, with face immortal in its beauty,
Asking what I suffered, and why in utter longing
I had dared call thee;


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Sappho (2)
Aphrodite (2)
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