Name: Sappho

Full name: Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics

Author: Bliss Carman
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Genres/categories:
Poetry, Free books

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ISBNs:
9781406512847
1406512842
Excerpt: ... greyness, Are my long thoughts of thee. How should thy friend fear the seasons? They only perish of winter 10 Whom Love, audacious and tender, Never hath visited. LXVIII You ask how love can keep the mortal soul Strong to the pitch of joy throughout the years. Ask how your brave cicada on the bough Keeps the long sweet insistence of his cry; Ask how the Pleiads steer across the night 5 In their serene unswerving mighty course; Ask how the wood-flowers waken to the sun, Unsummoned save by some mysterious word; Ask how the wandering swallows find your eaves Upon the rain-wind with returning spring; 10 Ask who commands the ever-punctual tide To keep the pendulous rhythm of the sea; And you shall know what leads the heart of man To the far haven of his hopes and fears. LXIX Like a tall forest were their spears, Their banners like a silken sea, When the great host in splendour passed Across the crimson sinking sun. And then the bray of brazen horns 5 Arose above their clanking march, As the long waving column filed Into the odorous purple dusk. O lover, in this radiant world Whence is the race of mortal men, 10 So frail, so mighty, and so fond, That fleets into the vast unknown? LXX My lover smiled, "O friend, ask not The journey's end, nor whence we are. That whistling boy who minds his goats So idly in the grey ravine, "The brown-backed rower drenched with spray, 5 The lemon-seller in the street, And the young girl who keeps her first Wild love-tryst at the rising moon, - "Lo, these are wiser than the wise. And not for all our questioning 10 Shall we discover more than joy, Nor find a better thing than love! "Let pass the banners and the spears, The hate, the battle, and the greed; For greater than all gifts is peace, 15 And strength is in the tranquil mind." LXXI Ye who have the stable world In the keeping of your hands. Flocks and men, the lasting hills, And the ever-wheeling stars; Ye who freight with wondrous things 5 The wide-wandering heart of...
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