Gnomics

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

p. 41

GNOMICS

I

My ways are quiet, none may find
My temper of malignant kind;
For one should check the words that start
When anger spreads within the heart.

II

Who from my hands what I can spare
Of gifts accept the largest share,
Those are the very ones who boast
No gratitude and wrong me most.

III

He who in face and form is fair
Must needs be good, the Gods declare;
But he whose thought and act are right
Will soon be equal fair to sight.

IV

Beauty of youth is but the flower
Of spring, whose pleasure lasts an hour;
While worth that knows no mortal doom
Is like the amaranthine bloom.