The Lesbian maid these words returned To greet the Samian sage, “For gems my taste has never burned, And flowers my choice engage. “The glittering stones, though rich and rare, No animation know, While vegetables fine and fair With vital action glow. “The senseless gem no pleasure moves, Displayed in fashion’s use, But flowers enjoy their gentle loves, And progeny produce. “Then when I shall surmount,” she cried, “Rude dissolution’s storm, Oh! let me not be petrified, But wear a living form. “Those matchless rays the diamond shows, With promptness I decline, That I may dwell within the rose And make its blossoms mine.” In recent years many poems have appeared on Sappho. For example, thinking perhaps of the story that Solon asked his nephew to teach him a song of Sappho before he died, and echoing the epithet of “sweetly smiling” in Alcaeus’ fragment, Richard Hovey (1864-1900) wrote in _The Independent_, April 30, 1896, _A Dream of Sappho_: I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night, Her nightingales were singing in the trees Beside the castled river; and the wind Fell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek, And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change; The night went on with me into my dream, This only I remember, that I said: ‘O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise, Sing me one song of those lost books of yours For which we poets still go sorrowing; That when I meet my fellows on the earth I may rejoice them more than many pearls;’ And she, the sweetly-smiling, answered me, As one who dreams: ‘I have forgotten them!’ We have referred above to Gamaliel Bradford’s use of Sappho’s apple on the topmost bough; and Maurice Thompson, the author of _Alice of Old Vincennes_ and the _Sapphic Secret_, published as his last song, _Sappho’s Apple_ in _The Independent_, Feb. 21, 1901: SAPPHO’S APPLE A dreamy languor lapsed along, And stirred the dusky-bannered boughs; With half a sigh and half a song The crooning tree did nod and drowse, While far aloft blush-tinted hung One perfect apple maiden-sweet, At which the gatherers vainly flung, And could not get to hoard or eat. “Reddest and best,” they growled and went Slowly away, each with his load Fragrant upon his shoulders bent, The hill-flowers darkening where they trode; “Reddest and best; but not for us; Some loafing lout will see it fall; The laborer’s prize—’twas ever thus— Is his who never works at all!” Soon came a vagrant, loitering, His young face browned by wind and sun, Weary, yet blithe and prone to sing, Tramping his way to Avalon; Even I it was, who, long athirst And hungry, saw the apple shine; Then wondrous wild sweet singing burst Flame-like across these lips of mine.