Part 8 (1/2)

Sappho loves flowers with a personal sympathy. She feels for the hyacinth:

”As when the shepherds on the hills Tread under foot the hyacinth, And on the ground the purple flower lies crushed.”

She sings also of the golden pulse that grows on the sh.o.r.es, and of the pure, soft bloom of the gra.s.s trampled under foot by the Cretan women as they dance round the fair altar of Aphrodite. The rose seems to have been her favorite flower, for, says Philostratus, ”Sappho loves the rose, and always crowns it with some praise, likening beautiful maidens to it.”

The birds, too, found in her a most sympathetic friend. Her ear is open to:

”Spring's messenger, the sweet-voiced nightingale,”

and she pities the wood-doves as ”their heart turns cold and their wings fall,” under the stroke from the arrow of the archer.

Sappho's love for nature is only surpa.s.sed by her love for art, for splendor and festivity, as they appeal to the aesthetic nature. She loves her lyre, the song and the dance, garlands, purple robes, and all that attended the wors.h.i.+p of Aphrodite and the Muses. Her lyre she thus addresses:

”Come, then, my lyre divine!

Let speech be thine.”

And to Aphrodite she utters this appeal:

”Come, Queen of Cyprus, pour the stream Of nectar, mingled lusciously With merriment, in cups of gold.”

She also calls about her the Muses and the Graces:

”Hither come, ye dainty Graces And ye fair-haired Muses now!”

And again:

”Come, rosy-armed, chaste Graces! come, Daughter of Jove.”

And yet again:

”Hither, hither come, ye Muses!

Leave the golden sky.”

In the wors.h.i.+p of Aphrodite and the Graces, garlands are appropriate for the devotees:

”Of foliage and flowers love-laden Twine wreaths for thy flowing hair With thine own soft fingers, maiden, Weave garlands of parsley fair;

”For flowers are sweet, and the Graces On suppliants wreathed with may Look down from their heavenly places, But turn from the crownless away.”

Such was the joy of the devotees of the Muses. Sappho believed in the adornment of the soul as well as of the body, and she thus addresses one who neglected the services of the Muses:

”Yea, thou shalt die, And lie Dumb in the silent tomb; Nor of thy name Shall there be any fame In ages yet to be or years to come; For of the flowering Rose, Which on Pieria blows, Thou hast no share: But in sad Hades' house Unknown, inglorious 'Mid the dark shades that wander there Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air.”

”I think there will be memory of us yet in after days,” said Sappho, and the sentiment is one which later poets have often imitated. Thus the poetess had intimations of the immortality that is justly hers, and the reader will heartily enter into the spirit of Swinburne's paraphrase:

”I, Sappho, shall be one with all these things, With all things high forever; and my face Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place, Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof In gladness, and much sadness and long love.”

Sappho sings of love and its manifestations, of longing and pa.s.sion, of grief and regret, of natural beauty in sea and sky, by day and by night, of the birds and trees and flowers, and ”all this is told us in language at once overpowering and delicate, in verse as symmetrical as it is exquisite, free, and fervid, through metaphor simple or sublime; each word, each line, expressive of the writer's inmost sense; with an art that, in its Greek constraint, comparison, and sweetness, and in its Oriental fervor, is faultless and unerring.”

Not only as a poet is Sappho of interest to the women of our day, but also because she was the founder of the first woman's club of which we have knowledge. This Lesbian literary club did not engage, however, in the study of current topics, or seek to gather sheaves of knowledge from the field of science and history, but was consecrated strictly to the service of the Muses. Sappho attracted by her fame young women of Lesbos and of neighboring cities. She gathered them about her, gave them instruction in poetry and music, and incited them to the cultivation of all the arts and graces. Many of these maidens from a distance doubtless sought the society of Sappho because they were weary of the low drudgery and monotonous routine of home life that fell to the lot of women in Ionian cities, and because they felt the need of a freer atmosphere and more inspiring surroundings.