To that god sing I so, who with echoing bow Sweet endless confusion brings; Who conquers all hearts, for their weal or their woe, Who startles--and stabs--and stings.’” --_Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold._ Laïs, the daughter of Sappho, loves Memnon, the man to whom Sappho has given her heart. This tragic circumstance hastens her end. The death of her daughter puts an end to Sappho’s love to Memnon. By moonshine she wanders to the sea, and raising her lyre high above her head, breaks it, and throws the pieces into the foaming waters. Memnon calls to her-- “‘Break not thy lyre, for much is yet thine own, Thy tuneful art and the undying love That I have vowed thee.’ ‘Peace,’ answered Sappho, ‘peace between us lies, For aye the shadow of my slumbering child, Who died for love of Memnon.’” Sappho leaves Sicily. In Lesbos, where Memnon reigns, she intends to throw herself into the sea. ‘All unseen then she climbed the rock, that rose from the ocean, There she uplifted her voice in song as though she would send him One farewell yet, the last e’er from earth she departed. Softly at first she sang, then the cadence uprising, Swelled like breakers afar, till slowly it sank into silence. “Weep thou not, because the gods have sent thee, And my fate, my life here ended lie. All that words could tell, my songs declare, All that could be borne, ’twas mine to bear; Thanks be to the gods--the end is nigh! Weep thou not! this life is dust and folly, Let me pass into the eternal light! All that once was mine has fled from me; Let me grasp the perfect whole and see Thus at last its radiance infinite. Weep thou not! whene’er my songs thou singest, Shall my spirit fly with thine to meet. Links of harmony join soul to soul! Now, where ocean’s billows softly roll, Tired of life, I’ll sink to slumber sweet.” The poetic narrative ends with this poem. The story of Hammerstein lies in Germany, in the Middle Ages, during the war between Henry IV. and his son Henry. Since her earliest youth the Queen had carried about with her the idea of a poem about Hammerstein. “Many hours,” she writes, “have I spent dreaming amongst the ruins and gazing over the Rhine. Then I seem to hear the old Kaiser knocking at the door, and see the gloomy Count who cursed his beautiful daughters.” Some lovely songs, such as the following, for instance, are interwoven in the narrative:-- “Through the forest there fluttered a song Upborne upon airy gay wings; As the breeze lisps the beech-leaves among, So softly it came to my strings, And the harp told the green Rhine again; So the trees and the birds knew the strain, And the river’s low whisperings.