Sappho, long since, in the years far sped, Sappho, I loved thee! Did I not seem Fosterling only of earth? I have fled, Fled to thee, sister. Time is a dream! Shelley is here with us! Death lies dead! Ah, how the bright waves gleam. Wide was the cage-door, idly swinging; April touched me and whispered ‘Come.’ Out and away to the great deep winging, Sister, I flashed to thee over the foam, Out to the sea of Eternity, singing ‘Mother, thy child comes home.’ J. W. Mackail echoes Swinburne’s high praise: “Many women have written poetry and some have written poetry of high merit and extreme beauty. But no other woman can claim an assured place in the first rank of poets” ... “The sole woman of any age or country who gained and still holds an unchallenged place in the first rank of the world’s poets, she is also one of the few poets of whom it may be said with confidence that they hold of none and borrow of none, and that their poetry is, in some unique way, an immediate inspiration.” Many another modern critic ranks Sappho as supreme. Typical are such eulogies as “Sappho, the most famous of all women” (Aldington), or “Sappho, incomparably the greatest poetess the world has ever seen” (Watts-Dunton in ninth ed. _Encyclopædia Britannica_). II. SAPPHO’S LIFE, LESBUS, HER LOVE-AFFAIRS, HER PERSONALITY AND PUPILS It is my purpose in the limited space at my disposal to show in a general way, since it will not be possible to go into details, the truth of Sappho’s prophecy that men would think of her[25] in after-times: to show her importance as a woman and poetess and our debt to her, and also to give my readers some acquaintance with the real and the unreal Sappho so that they can judge how much is fact and how much is fancy in what they hear and read about Sappho, thus proving again that the warp and woof of literature cannot be understood without a knowledge of the original Greek threads. This chapter will consider Sappho’s Life. Unfortunately we know little of Sappho herself, and about that little there is doubt. Even the ancient lives of Sappho are lost. If we had Chamaeleon’s work on Sappho,[26] or the exegesis of Sappho and Alcaeus[27] by Callias of Mytilene, or the book on Sappho’s metres by Dracon of Stratonicea, we should not be left so in the dark; but all these have perished or, what comes to the same thing, are undiscovered. Like Homer, Sappho gives us almost no definite information about herself, and we must depend on late lexicographers, commentators, and imitators. Villainous stories arose about her and gathered added vileness till they reached a climax in the licentious Latin of Ovid, especially as seen in Pope’s translation of the epistle of Sappho to Phaon.