Prologue

The Poems of Sappho, by John Myers O'Hara, [1910], at sacred-texts.com

Who shall strike the wax of mystery from those priceless amphora, and give to the unsophisticated nostrils of the average reader the ravishing bouquet of wine pressed in a garden in Mitylene, twenty-five centuries ago?—MAURICE THOMPSON.

Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I, too,
              Full of the vision,

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
              Saw the reluctant

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
              Shone Mitylene.

                           —SWINBURNE.