Sappho - Selected Poems and Fragments

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.htm#_Toc76357041

Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved
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Sappho - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho
( /ˈsæfoʊ/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω [psapːʰɔː]) was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Contents

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’3

‘Be here, by me’4

‘Come to me here from Crete’5

‘The stars around the beautiful moon’6

‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’7

‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’8

‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’9

‘Love shook my heart’10

‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’11

‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’12

Fragments, on Love and Desire. 13

Fragments, on the Muses. 16

‘I have a daughter, golden’18

‘Hesperus, you bring back again’19

‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’

‘The Moon is down’20

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’

Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,

I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,

Don’t shatter my heart with fierce

Pain, goddess,

But come now, if ever before

You heard my voice, far off, and listened,

And left your father’s golden house,

And came,

Yoking your chariot. Lovely the swift

Sparrows that brought you over black earth

A whirring of wings through mid-air

Down the sky.

They came. And you, sacred one,

Smiling with deathless face, asking

What now, while I suffer: why now

I cry out to you, again:

What now I desire above all in my

Mad heart. ‘Whom now, shall I persuade

To admit you again to her love,

Sappho, who wrongs you now?

If she runs now she’ll follow later,

If she refuses gifts she’ll give them.

If she loves not, now, she’ll soon

Love against her will.’

Come to me now, then, free me

From aching care, and win me

All my heart longs to win. You,

Be my friend.




‘Be here, by me’

Be here, by me,

Lady Hera, I pray

Who answered the Atreides,

Glorious kings.

They gained great things

There, and at sea,

And came towards Lesbos,

Their home path barred

Till they called to you, to Zeus

Of suppliants, to Dionysus, Thyone’s

Lovely child: be kind now,

Help me, as you helped them…




‘Come to me here from Crete’

Come to me here from Crete,

To this holy temple, where

Your lovely apple grove stands,

And your altars that flicker

With incense.

And below the apple branches, cold

Clear water sounds, everything shadowed

By roses, and sleep that falls from

Bright shaking leaves.

And a pasture for horses blossoms

With the flowers of spring, and breezes

Are flowing here like honey:

Come to me here,

Here, Cyprian, delicately taking

Nectar in golden cups

Mixed with a festive joy,

And pour.




‘The stars around the beautiful moon’

The stars around the beautiful moon

Hiding their glittering forms

Whenever she shines full on earth….

Silver….




‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’

He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,

What should we do?

Beat your breasts, girls, tear your tunics…




‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’

Some say horsemen, some say warriors,

Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest

Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s

What you love.

It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,

Since Helen, she who outshone

All others in beauty, left

A fine husband,

And headed for Troy

Without a thought for

Her daughter, her dear parents…

Led astray….

And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step

Or that flicker of light on her face,

I’d rather see than Lydian chariots

Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.




‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’

Stand up and look at me, face to face

My friend,

Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....




‘Love shook my heart’

Love shook my heart,

Like the wind on the mountain

Troubling the oak-trees.




‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’

He’s equal with the Gods, that man

Who sits across from you,

Face to face, close enough, to sip

Your voice’s sweetness,

And what excites my mind,

Your laughter, glittering. So,

When I see you, for a moment,

My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,

Delicate fire, in the flesh.

Blind, stunned, the sound

Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold

Tremors over the skin,

I turn the colour of dead grass,

And I’m an inch from dying.




‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’

But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,

Weave shoots of dill together, with slender hands,

For the Graces prefer those who are wearing flowers,

And turn away from those who go uncrowned.




Fragments, on Love and Desire

I

…..You burn me…..

II

Remembering those things

We did in our youth…

…Many, beautiful things…

III

…Again and again…because those
I care for best, do me
Most harm…

IV

You came, and I was mad for you
And you cooled my mind that burned with longing…

V

Once long ago I loved you, Atthis,
A little graceless child you seemed to me

VI

Nightingale, herald of spring
With a voice of longing….

VII

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

VII

………..but you have forgotten me…

VIII

You and my servant Eros….

IX

Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,

High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,

Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…

X

Neither for me the honey

Nor the honeybee…

XI

Come from heaven, wrapped in a purple cloak…

XII

Of all the stars, the loveliest…

XIII

I spoke to you, Aphrodite, in a dream….

XIV

Yet I am not one who takes joy in wounding,

Mine is a quiet mind….

XV

Like the mountain hyacinth, the purple flower
That shepherds trample to the ground…

XVI

Dear mother, I cannot work the loom
Filled, by Aphrodite, with love for a slender boy…




Fragments, on the Muses

I

And when you are gone there will be no memory

Of you and no regret. For you do not share

The Pierian roses, but unseen in the house of Hades

You will stray, breathed out, among the ghostly dead.

II

The Muses have filled my life

With delight.

And when I die I shall not be forgotten.

III

And I say to you someone will remember us

In time to come….

IV

Here now the delicate Graces
And the Muses with beautiful hair…

V

It’s not right, lament in the Muses’ house…

….that for us is not fitting….

VI

Here now, again, Muses, leaving the golden…

VII

Surpassing, like the singer of Lesbos, those elsewhere…




‘I have a daughter, golden’

I have a daughter, golden,

Beautiful, like a flower -

Kleis, my love -

And I would not exchange her for

All the riches of Lydia......




‘Hesperus, you bring back again’

Hesperus, you bring back again

What the dawn light scatters,

Bringing the sheep: bringing the kid:

Bringing the little child back to its mother.




‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’

Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed

Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre:

But now old age has seized my tender body,

Now my hair is white, and no longer dark.

My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me,
That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance.

I grieve often for my state; what can I do?
Being human, there’s no way not to grow old.

Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten,

Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end:

Handsome and young he was then, yet at last

Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife.




‘The Moon is down’

The Moon is down,

The Pleiades. Midnight,

The hours flow on,

I lie, alone.

John Keats - Biography

John Keats, 1795-1821

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/

Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc.

Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved.


John Keats (1795-1821), renowned poet of the English Romantic Movement, wrote some of the greatest English language poems including "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Ode To A Nightingale", and "Ode On a Grecian Urn":

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in Moorgate, London, England, the first child born to Frances Jennings (b.1775-d.1810) and Thomas Keats (d.1804), an employee of a livery stable. He had three siblings: George (1797-1841), Thomas (1799-1818), and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803-1889). After leaving school in Enfield, Keats went on to apprentice with Dr. Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. After his father died in a riding accident, and his mother died of tuberculosis, John and his brothers moved to Hampstead. It was here that Keats met Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) who would become a great friend. Remembering his first meeting with him, Brown writes "His full fine eyes were lustrously intellectual, and beaming (at that time!)". Much grieved by his death, Brown worked for many years on his memoir and biography, Life of John Keats (1841). In it Brown claims that it was not until Keats read Edmund Spencer's Faery Queen that he realised his own gift for the poetic. Keats was an avid student in the fields of medicine and natural history, but he then turned his attentions to the literary works of such authors as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Keats had his poems published in the magazines of the day at the encouragement of many including James Henry Leigh Hunt Esq. (1784-1859), editor of the Examiner and to whom Keats dedicated his first collection Poems (1817). It includes "To My Brother George", "O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell", and "Happy is England! I Could Be Content". Upon its appearance a series of personal attacks directed at Keats ensued in the pages of Blackwood's Magazine. Despite the controversy surrounding his life, Keats's literary merit prevailed. That same year Keats met Percy Bysshe Shelley who would also become a great friend. When Shelley invited the ailing Keats to stay with him and his family in Italy, he declined. When Shelley's body was washed ashore after drowning, a volume of Keats's poetry was found in his pocket.

Having worked on it for many months, Keats finished his epic poem comprising four books, Endymion: A Poetic Romance--"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever"--in 1818. That summer he travelled to the Lake District of England and on to Ireland and Scotland on a walking tour with Brown. They visited the grave of Robert Burns and reminisced upon John Milton's poetry. While he was not aware of the seriousness of it, Keats was suffering from the initial stages of the deadly infectious disease tuberculosis. He cut his trip short and upon return to Hampstead immediately tended to his brother Tom who was then in the last stages of the disease. After Tom's death in December of 1818, Keats lived with Brown.

Early one morning I was awakened in my bed by a pressure on my hand. It was Keats, who came to tell me his brother was no more. I said nothing, and we both remained silent for awhile, my hand fast locked in his. At length, my thoughts returning from the dead to the living, I said--'Have 'nothing more to do with those lodgings,--and 'alone too. Had you not better live with me?' He paused, pressed my hand warmly, and replied,-'I think it would be better.' From that moment he was my inmate. 

- Life of John Keats by Charles Armitage Brown, 1841

Around this time Keats met, fell in love with, and became engaged to eighteen year old Frances "Fanny" Brawne (1800-1865). He wrote one of his more famous sonnets to her titled "Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art". While their relationship inspired much spiritual development for Keats, it also proved to be tempestuous, filled with the highs and lows from jealousy and infatuation of first love. Brown was not impressed and tried to provide some emotional stability to Keats. Many for a time were convinced that Fanny was the cause of his illness, or, used that as an excuse to try to keep her away from him. For a while even Keats entertained the possibility that he was merely suffering physical manifestations of emotional anxieties--but after suffering a hemorrhage he gave Fanny permission to break their engagement. She would hear nothing of it and by her word provided much comfort to Keats in his last days that she was ultimately loyal to him.

Although 1819 proved to be his most prolific year of writing, Keats was also in dire financial straits. His brother George had borrowed money he could ill-afford to part with. His earning Fanny's mother's approval to marry depended on his earning as a writer and he started plans with his publisher John Taylor (1781-1864) for his next volume of poems. At the beginning of 1820 Keats started to show more pronounced signs of the deadly tuberculosis that had killed his mother and brother. After a lung hemorrhage, Keats calmly accepted his fate, and he enjoyed several weeks of respite under Brown's watchful eye. As was common belief at the time that bleeding a patient was beneficial to healing, Keats was bled and given opium to relieve his anxiety and pain. He was at times put on a starvation diet, then at other times prescribed to eat meat and drink red wine to gain strength. Despite these ill-advised good-intentions, and suffering increasing weakness and fever, Keats was able to emerge from his fugue and organise the publication of his next volume of poetry.

Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820) includes some of his best-known and oft-quoted works: "Hyperion", "To Autumn", and "Ode To A Nightingale". "Nightingale" evokes all the pain and suffering that Keats experienced during his short life-time: the death of his mother; the physical anguish he saw as a young apprentice tending to the sick and dying at St. Guy's Hospital; the death of his brother; and ultimately his own physical and spiritual suffering in love and illness. Keats lived to see positive reviews of Lamia, even in Blackwood's magazine. But the positivity was not to last long; Brown left for Scotland and the ailing Keats lived with Hunt for a time. But it was unbearable to him and only exacerbated his condition--he was unable to see Fanny, so, when he showed up at the Brawne's residence in much emotional agitation, sick, and feverish, they could not refuse him. He enjoyed a month with them, blissfully under the constant care of his beloved Fanny. Possibly bolstered by his finally having unrestricted time with her, and able to imagine a happy future with her, Keats considered his last hope of recovery of a rest cure in the warm climes of Italy. As a parting gift Fanny gave him a piece of marble which she had often clasped to cool her hand. In September of 1820 Keats sailed to Rome with friend and painter Joseph Severn (1793-1879, who was unaware of his circumstances with Fanny and the gravity of his health.

Keats put on a bold front but it soon became apparent to Severn that he was terminally ill. They stayed in rooms on the Piazza Navona near the Spanish Steps, and enjoyed the lively sights and sounds of the people and culture, but Keats soon fell into a deep depression. When his attending doctor James Clark (1788-1870) finally voiced aloud the grim prognosis, Keats's medical background came to the fore and he longed to end his life and avoid the humiliating physical and mental torments of tuberculosis. By early 1821 he was confined to bed, Severn a devoted nurse. Keats had resolved not to write to Fanny and would not read a letter from her for fear of the pain it would cause him, although he constantly clasped her marble. During bouts of coughing, fever, nightmares, Keats also tried to cheer his friend, who held him till the end.

John Keats died on 23 February 1821 in Rome, Italy, and now rests in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, by the pyramid of Caius Cestius, near his friend Shelley. His epitaph reads "Here lies one whose name was writ in water", inspired by the line "all your better deeds, Shall be in water writ" from Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher's (1579-1625) five act play Philaster or: Love Lies A-bleeding. Just a year later, Shelley was buried in the same cemetery, not long after he had written "Adonais" (1821) in tribute to his friend;

I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

- Adonais by Shelley, 1821

Fanny Brawne married in 1833 and died at the age of sixty-five. English poet and friend of Brown's, Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885) wrote Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848). During his lifetime and since, John Keats inspired numerous other authors, poets, and artists, and remains one of the most widely read and studied 19th century poets.

List of poems by John Keats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_John_Keats

Odes

• Ode to a Nightingale
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Ode to Psyche
• To Autumn
• Ode on Melancholy
• Ode on Indolence

• Ode to Fancy
• Ode - (Bards of Passion and of Mirth)
• Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
• Robin Hood - To a Friend
• Ode to Apollo

Other poems by John Keats

• I stood tiptoe upon a little hill
• Specimen of an induction to a poem
• Calidore - a fragment
• To Some Ladies
• On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses from the Same Ladies
• To - Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterwards Mrs. George Keats
• To Hope
• Imitation of Spenser
• Three Sonnets on Woman
• Sleep and Poetry
• On Death
• Women, Wine, and Snuff
• Fill For Me a Brimming Bowl
• Isabella or The Pot of Basil
• To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown
• On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt
• To the Ladies who Saw me Crown'd
• Hymn to Apollo
• The Eve of St. Agnes

Epistles

• To George Felton Mathew
• To My Brother George
• To Charles Cowden Clarke

Sonnets

• To My Brother George
• To - [Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs]
• Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison
• How many bards gild the lapses of time!
• To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
• To G. A. W. [Georgiana Augusta Wylie]
• O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell
• To My Brothers
• Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
• To one who has been long in city pent
• On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
• On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour
• Addressed to Haydon
• On the Grasshopper and Cricket
• To Koscuisko
• Happy is England! I could be content
• Sonnet on Peace
• Sonnet to Byron
• Sonnet to Chatterton
• Sonnet to Spenser

Endymion

• Book I
• Book II
• Book III
• Book IV

Lamia

• Lamia - part 1
• Lamia - part 2

Hyperion - A Fragment

• Hyperion - Book I
• Hyperion - Book II
• Hyperion - Book III