Willis Barnstone

Sappho

A prize-winning poet offers a contemporary translation of poems written by the greatest Greek love poet, whose thrilling lyric verse and mystique endures to be rediscovered by each generation. Original.

The Complete Poems of Sappho

Larissa Campos

Sappho’s lyrics, composed in the seventh century B.C.E., transcend their time and place to enchant us now. In lines that are at once passionate and precise, seemingly artless and yet magical, she writes of the cycles of life and death, and of erotic desire as a sacred calling. She looks into the burning center of things, and expresses pure wonder in the evening star, the moon, birdsong.

Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us.

You will remember we did these things in our youth, many and beautiful things.

Love shook my heart like wind on a mountain punishing oak trees.

You came and I went mad about you. You cooled my mind burning with longing. 

When she left me she wept profusely and told me, “Oh how we’ve suffered in all this. Psapfo, I swear I go unwillingly.”

And I answered her, “Be happy, go and remember me, you know how we worshiped you. But if not, I want to remind you of beautiful days we shared, how you took wreaths of violets, roses and crocuses, and at my side tied them in garlands made of flowers round your tender throat, and with sweet myrrh oil worthy of a queen you anointed your limbs and on a soft bed gently you would satisfy your longing and how there was no holy shrine where we were absent, no grove no dance no sound”

When anger is flooding through your chest best to quiet your reckless barking tongue [158] 

Often those I treat well are just the ones who most harm me

Hello and Goodbye A hearty good day to the daughter of the house of Polyanax [155]

I am not of a wounding spirit rather I have a gentle heart [120]

The Complete Poems of Sappho quotes

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