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The Poems of Sappho, by John Myers O'Hara, [1910], at sacred-texts.com
Come, shell divine, be vocal now for me,
As when the Hebrus river and the sea
To Lesbos bore, on waves harmonious,
The head and golden lyre of Orpheus.
Calliope, queen of the tuneful throng,
Descend and be the Muse of melic song;
For through my frame life's tides renewing bring
The glad vein-warming vigor of the spring.
The skies that dome the earth with far blue fire
Make the wide land one temple of desire;—
Just now across my cheek I felt a God,
In the enraptured breeze, pass zephyr-shod.
Was that Pan's flute, O Atthis, that we heard,
Or the soft love-note of a woodland bird?
That flame a scarlet wing that skimmed the stream,
Or the red flash of our impassioned dream?
Ah, soon again we two shall gather fair
Garlands of dill and rose to deck our bare
White arms that cling, white breast that burns to breast,
When the long night of love shall banish rest.