Not idly did the Muses' choir select
The barren laurel for their ornament:
Cold, destitute of odour as of fruit,
It weights upon the brow to which it promised
Full compensation for each sacrifice.
Grillparzer's Sappho.
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I saw her in her youth's bright dawn; her eye |
Smiled like the sunshine of a summer sky; |
Her cheek of rose, and lip of deeper glow, |
Seemed yet unsullied by one tear of woe: |
5 She loved to cull the spring's first flowers, and wear |
The blossoms in her curls of ebon hair; |
Or range the ocean cliffs, and search their cells, |
For vivid sea-weed, and for glittering shells; |
And strangers might have deemed her simple pleasures |
10 Were sought alone in Nature's boundless treasures: |
But hers was not a common soul or mind: |
Remote from crowds, sequestered from mankind, |
In her lone walks, she early learned to chuse |
A loved companion in the silent Muse; |
15 With her would soar on Fancy's eagle wings, |
Till lost in bright and vast imaginings! |
A few short years elapsed -- I saw her then, |
A lovely meteor in the paths of men; |
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She smiled amid the sound of mirth and song, |
20 The idol of a gay and glittering throng; |
Yet, though with eager gaze her form I viewed, |
Rich in the ripened bloom of womanhood, |
Methought the votive crowd's assiduous duty |
Surpassed the homage paid alone to Beauty: |
25 I learned the cause -- her high and gifted lays |
Had won the public ear, the public praise; |
Cold critics even on her brow had set |
The trophy of Fame's golden violet; |
And princes hung delighted on her strains; |
30 And statesmen there forgot their toils and pains; |
And beauties left for them the halls of gladness; |
And warriors wept o'er their delicious sadness. |
Yet, though triumphant joy was in her face, |
It had not lost its sweet and bashful grace; |
35 And when the crowd who rapture felt or feigned |
Spoke of the unfading laurels she had gained, |
She brightly blushed, and trembling turned aside, |
And woman's shame prevailed o'er woman's pride. |
I saw her ere another year had past -- |
40 But oh! how altered since I met her last! |
Her tale was short -- she loved in evil hour -- |
Loved with that wild, intense, absorbing power, |
Felt by the soul of minstrel fire alone, |
And to all others foreign and unknown. |
45 Her love was fixed on one of common mould, |
Graceful and gay, but selfish, vain, and cold; |
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He could not prize that passion, raised, refined, |
Nay, with dull envy he beheld the mind, |
Whose ardent energy, and high wrought tone, |
50 Seemed to reproach the weakness of his own. |
He scorned her heart. -- Around her early tomb, |
And sorrowing youths, with laurels, bright and green, |
And wailing numbers, sought the woful scene, |
And wept the pride and darling of the age, |
55 The lovelier Sappho of a purer page; |
But he, the frozen one, for whom she died, |
Turned from her grave, and wooed a heartless bride. |
Daughter of Mind! -- how oft is this thy fate |
To dwell in lonely brightness desolate; |
60 To win the homage of a servile train, |
Yet lose the only heart thou sigh'st to gain! |
Man through the paths of minstrelsy may stray, |
Nor heed the perils of the thorny way: |
But Woman, whose devoted, tender feelings, |
65 Acquire new force from Fancy's wild revealings, |
Will steep in tears her laurels of renown, |
Unless Love blends with them his myrtle crown; |
And Love beholds her on dizzy height |
Robed in resplendent rays of dazzling light, |
70 And seeks some humbler maid in lowly bower, |
To soothe and solace with his smiling power. |
Hear this, ye cold of heart, and envy not |
The barren splendour of her cheerless lot, |
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Nor covet the bright wreaths her song secures, |
75 And murmur that such glories are not yours! |
Oh! think, while owning all that most you prize, |
Dear social intercourse, domestic ties, |
How hard her lot, from all such joys confined, |
The sovereign of a desert wast of mind: |
80 When her gay strains the voice of praise are waking, |
Know that the heart which breathes them may be breaking; |
And when her lyre a lay of sorrow pours, |
And the cold world admires, applauds, adores, |
Think that around that lyre the cypress clings, |
85 And, like the swan, her own sad dirge she sings! |
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