And after detailing with gusto the bloody ingenuities of her plan of torture, she states that her motive is, To wring thy very spirit through the flesh. The myth that Sappho's agony resulted from an offense done to Aphrodite, is several times alluded to. In _Sappho and Phaon_ she asserts her independence of Aphrodite's good will, and in revenge the goddess turns Phaon's affection away from Sappho, back to Thalassa, the mother of his children. Sappho's infatuation for Phaon, the slave, seems a cruel jest of Aphrodite, who fills Sappho with a wholly blind and unreasoning passion. In all three of Swinburne's Lesbian poems, Aphrodite's anger is mentioned. This is the sole theme of _Sapphics_, in which poem the goddess, displeased by Sappho's preferment of love poetry to the actual delights of love, yet tried to win Sappho back to her: Called to her, saying "Turn to me, O my Sappho," Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not Tears or laughter darken immortal eyelids.... Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers, Full of songs and kisses and little whispers, Full of music; only beheld among them Soar as a bird soars Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion, Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders, Clothed with the wind's wings. It seems likely that this myth of Aphrodite's anger is an allegory indicating the tragic character of all poetic love, in that, while incarcerated in the body, the singer strives to break through the limits of the flesh and to grasp ideality. The issue is made clear in Mackaye's drama. There Sappho's rival is Thalassa, Phaon's slave-mate, who conceives as love's only culmination the bearing of children. Sappho, in her superiority, points out that mere perpetuation of physical life is a meaningless circle, unless it leads to some higher satisfaction. But in the end the figure of "the eternal mother," as typified by Thalassa, is more powerful than is Sappho, in the struggle for Phaon's love. Thus Aphrodite asserts her unwillingness to have love refined into a merely spiritual conception.