

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.