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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