“But hither come, as thou of old, When my voice reached thine ear afar, Didst leave thy father’s hall of gold, And yoke thy car, And through mid air their whirring wing Thy bonny doves did swiftly ply O’er the dark earth, and thee did bring Down from the sky. Right soon they came, and thou, blest Queen, A smile upon thy face divine, Didst ask what ail’d me, what might mean That call of mine. ‘What would’st thou have, with heart on fire, Sappho?’ thou saidst. ‘Whom pray’st thou me To win for thee to fond desire? Who wrongeth thee? Soon shall he seek, who now doth shun; Who scorns thy gifts, shall gifts bestow; Who loves thee not, shall love anon, Wilt thou or no.’ So come thou now, and set me free From carking cares; bring to full end My heart’s desire; thyself O be My stay and friend!” The perfection of the Greek style is fine simplicity. We must not say that this characteristic perfection is more absolutely displayed in Sappho than in Homer or Sophocles. It is, however, illustrated by Sappho in that region of verse which pre-eminently demands it, the lyric of personal emotion. There may be, with different persons and at different dates, wide differences of interest in regard to the themes and structures of the epic, the drama, or the triumphal ode. Most forms of poetry must some time cease to find full appreciation, because of the peculiar ideas and conventions of their time and place. But the poetry of the primal and eternal passions of the human heart, of its experiences and its emotions, carries with it those touches which make the whole world kin. Love and sorrow are re-born with every human being. Time and civilisation make little difference. But those touches are only weakened by far-sought words and elaborate metres, by recondite conceits and ambitious psychology. Perhaps the woman who seeks to come nearest to Sappho in poetry is Mrs. Browning, but she falls far short of her predecessor, not only through inferior mastery of form, but also through an excessive “bookishness” of thought. The poet moves by-- “High and passionate thoughts To their own music chanted.” In the case of songs whose theme is what Sappho calls the “bitter sweet” of love, their proper style has been determined by the gathering consensus of humanity, and it is a style simple but powerful, with a magic recurring in cadences easy to grasp and too affecting to forget. It is the style of “Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,” not of the Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day. Sappho’s songs fulfil all the conditions, and even of her fragments that is true which her imitator Horace said of her completer poems, as he more happily possessed them-- “Still breathes the love, still lives the fire Imparted to the Lesbian’s lyre.”