AMERICAN. In America in early days little attention was paid to the content of Sappho, but the Phaon story is sometimes used, as for example by Philip Freneau of New Jersey, the “poet of the American Revolution,” the “creature of the opposition” (1752-1832). In _The Monument of Phaon_, a poem published in 1795, in the form of a dialogue between Sappho and the traveller, Ismenius informs her that he saw the tomb of her deserter, Phaon, in Sicily, erected by another lady: Not distant far a monument arose Among the trees, and form’d of Parian stone, ... A sculptured Venus on the summit wept, A pensive Cupid dropt the parting tear. The last lines are: I’ll go! and from the high Leucadian steep Take my last farewell in the lover’s leap, I charge thee Phaon, by this deed of woe, To meet me in the Elysian shades below, No rival beauty shall pretend a share, Sappho alone shall walk with Phaon there. She spoke, and downward from the mountain’s height Plung’d in the plashy wave to everlasting night. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in the index to the first volume of the _Southern Literary Messenger_ states that a stanza of Sappho’s second ode is embodied in his poem, _To Sarah_: In such an hour when are forgot The World, its cares and my own lot Thou seemest then to be A gentle guarding spirit given To guide my wandering thoughts to heaven If they should stray from thee. In _Ulalume_ there is a possible echo of fragment (E. 16): In terror she spoke, letting sink her Wings till they trailed in the dust, In agony sobbed, letting sink her Plumes till they trailed in the dust. In _Al Aaraaf_, I, 43 ff., Poe says in a note that he is referring to Sappho in the lines: ... lilies such as rear’d the head On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang So eagerly around about to hang Upon the flying footsteps—deep pride— Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died. Dr. Thomas O. Mabbott of Columbia University has called my attention to the fact that Poe published a version of Sappho’s second ode by Mary E. Hewitt in _Broadway Journal_, I, no. 24 (1845); that he knew “Udoch’s” note (_Southern Literary Messenger_, I, p. 454, April, 1835) where there is a reference to the _Spectator_, no. 229; and that the paper, _Some Ancient Greek Authors_, signed P. in the _Southern Literary Messenger_ for April, 1836, where a conventional account of Sappho is given, was probably written by Poe.