Thee, the storm-bird, nightingale-souled, Brother of Sappho, the seas reclaim! Age upon age have the great waves rolled Mad with her music, exultant, aflame; Thee, thee too, shall their glory enfold, Lit with thy snow-winged fame.
Back, thro’ the years, fleets the sea-bird’s wing: Sappho, of old time, once,—ah, hark! So did he love her of old and sing! Listen, he flies to her, back thro’ the dark! Sappho, of old time, once.... Yea, Spring Calls him home to her, hark!
Sappho, long since, in the years far sped, Sappho, I loved thee! Did I not seem Fosterling only of earth? I have fled, Fled to thee, sister. Time is a dream! Shelley is here with us! Death lies dead! Ah, how the bright waves gleam.
Wide was the cage-door, idly swinging; April touched me and whispered ‘Come.’ Out and away to the great deep winging, Sister, I flashed to thee over the foam, Out to the sea of Eternity, singing ‘Mother, thy child comes home.’
J. W. Mackail echoes Swinburne’s high praise: “Many women have written poetry and some have written poetry of high merit and extreme beauty. But no other woman can claim an assured place in the first rank of poets” ... “The sole woman of any age or country who gained and still holds an unchallenged place in the first rank of the world’s poets, she is also one of the few poets of whom it may be said with confidence that they hold of none and borrow of none, and that their poetry is, in some unique way, an immediate inspiration.”
Many another modern critic ranks Sappho as supreme. Typical are such eulogies as “Sappho, the most famous of all women” (Aldington), or “Sappho, incomparably the greatest poetess the world has ever seen” (Watts-Dunton in ninth ed. _Encyclopædia Britannica_).
II. SAPPHO’S LIFE, LESBUS, HER LOVE-AFFAIRS, HER PERSONALITY AND PUPILS
It is my purpose in the limited space at my disposal to show in a general way, since it will not be possible to go into details, the truth of Sappho’s prophecy that men would think of her[25] in after-times: to show her importance as a woman and poetess and our debt to her, and also to give my readers some acquaintance with the real and the unreal Sappho so that they can judge how much is fact and how much is fancy in what they hear and read about Sappho, thus proving again that the warp and woof of literature cannot be understood without a knowledge of the original Greek threads. This chapter will consider Sappho’s Life.