Farewell; across the threshold many feet Shall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again. ... ‘Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?’ Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go, But they go driven, straining back with fear, And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea. ... Yet they shall say: ‘It was for Cercolas— She died because she could not bear her love.’ ... Others shall say: ‘Grave Dica wrought her death.’ ... Ah, Dica, it is not for thee I go. And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sail Here in the windless harbor, for the south. ... How should they know that Sappho lived and died Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover, ... The gods have given life, I gave them song; The debt is paid and now I turn to go. Alfred Noyes, in his poem _In Memory of Swinburne_ uses the fragment which Swinburne himself expanded (cf. p. 12). Edwin Arlington Robinson[184] has translated _The Dust of Timas_ (cf. p. 100), which has recently been diluted by William Stebbing into twelve verses in his poem, _A Bride in Death_. Robinson’s rendering of Posidippus’ epigram on Doricha is also excellent: So now the very bones of you are gone Where they were dust and ashes long ago; And there was the last ribbon you tied on To bind your hair, and that is dust also; And somewhere there is dust that was of old A soft and scented garment that you wore— The same that once till dawn did closely fold You in with fair Charaxus, fair no more. But Sappho, and the white leaves of her song, Will make your name a word for all to learn, And all to love thereafter, even while It’s but a name; and this will be as long As there are distant ships that will return Again to your Naucratis and the Nile. There is little of Sappho except in name in Agnes Kendrick Gray’s verses[185] or in those of William Alexander Percy.[186] Harry Kemp is thinking of Byron rather than Sappho herself when he says that the lines, “the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sung,” went to his soul like a white hot iron. There is more in George Horton,[187] who in the last poem on Sappho which I have seen from his pen has a refrain on “bitter-sweet.” Mr. Horton forgets that we do know that Pittacus, (see illustration Pl. 2) was “lord of Lesbos’ isle,” but the general sentiment is true all the same: BALLADE OF SAPPHO’S FAME Oh, who was lord of Lesbos’ isle When Sappho sang for many a year, And great Apollo’s self the while, Ceased from the lyre and bent to hear? The titles to his heart so near, His lineage, who can now repeat? Yet she escaped oblivion drear Who said that love is “bitter-sweet.”