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SAPPHO TO PHAON FROM THE FIFTEENTH OF OVID’S EPISTLES - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

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SAPPHO TO PHAON

FROM THE FIFTEENTH OF OVID’S EPISTLES

Written, according to Pope, in 1707. First published in Tonson’s Ovid, 1712.

    • Say, lovely Youth, that dost my heart command,
    • Can Phaon’s eyes forget his Sappho’s hand?
    • Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
    • To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
    • Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
    • The lute neglected and the lyric Muse;
    • Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
    • And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
    • I burn, I burn, as when thro’ ripen’d corn
    • By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!10
    • Phaon to Ætna’s scorching fields retires,
    • While I consume with more than Ætna’s fires!
    • No more my soul a charm in music finds;
    • Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.
    • Soft scenes of solitude no more can please;
    • Love enters there, and I’m my own disease.
    • No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
    • Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
    • All other loves are lost in only thine,
    • O youth, ungrateful to a flame like mine!
    • Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,21
    • Those heav’nly looks, and dear deluding eyes?
    • The harp and bow would you like Phœbus bear,
    • A brighter Phœbus Phaon might appear;
    • Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
    • Not Bacchus’ self with Phaon could compare:
    • Yet Phœbus lov’d, and Bacchus felt the flame,
    • One Daphne warm’d, and one the Cretan dame;
    • Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
    • Than ev’n those Gods contend in charms with thee.30
    • The Muses teach me all their softest lays,
    • And the wide world resounds with Sappho’s praise.
    • Tho’ great Alcæus more sublimely sings,
    • And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,
    • No less renown attends the moving lyre,
    • Which Venus tunes, and all her loves inspire;
    • To me what Nature has in charms denied,
    • Is well by Wit’s more lasting flames supplied.
    • Tho’ short my stature, yet my name extends
    • To Heav’n itself, and earth’s remotest ends.40
    • Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame
    • Inspired young Perseus with a gen’rous flame;
    • Turtles and doves of diff’rent hues unite,
    • And glossy jet is pair’d with shining white.
    • If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,
    • But such as merit, such as equal thine,
    • By none, alas! by none thou canst be mov’d,
    • Phaon alone by Phaon must be lov’d!
    • Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ,
    • Once in her arms you centred all your joy:
    • No time the dear remembrance can remove,51
    • For oh! how vast a memory has Love!
    • My music, then, you could for ever hear,
    • And all my words were music to your ear.
    • You stopp’d with kisses my enchanting tongue,
    • And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
    • In all I pleas’d, but most in what was best;
    • And the last joy was dearer than the rest.
    • Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired,
    • You still enjoy’d, and yet you still desired,
    • Till, all dissolving, in the trance we lay,61
    • And in tumultuous raptures died away.
    • The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame;
    • Why was I born, ye Gods, a Lesbian dame?
    • But ah, beware, Sicilian nymphs! nor boast
    • That wand’ring heart which I so lately lost;
    • Nor be with all those tempting words abused,
    • Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.
    • And you that rule Sicilia’s happy plains,
    • Have pity, Venus, on your poet’s pains!70
    • Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run,
    • And still increase the woes so soon begun?
    • Inured to sorrow from my tender years,
    • My parents’ ashes drank my early tears:
    • My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame,
    • Ignobly burn’d in a destructive flame:
    • An infant daughter late my griefs increas’d,
    • And all a mother’s cares distract my breast.
    • Alas! what more could Fate itself impose,
    • But thee, the last, and greatest of my woes?80
    • No more my robes in waving purple flow,
    • Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;
    • No more my locks in ringlets curl’d diffuse
    • The costly sweetness of Arabian dews,
    • Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind,
    • That fly disorder’d with the wanton wind:
    • For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?
    • He’s gone, whom only she desired to please!
    • Cupid’s light darts my tender bosom move;
    • Still is there cause for Sappho still to love:90
    • So from my birth the sisters fix’d my doom,
    • And gave to Venus all my life to come;
    • Or, while my Muse in melting notes complains,
    • My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
    • By charms like thine which all my soul have won,
    • Who might not—ah! who would not be undone?
    • For those Aurora Cephalus might scorn,
    • And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn.
    • For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon’s sleep,99
    • And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep.
    • Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies;
    • But Mars on thee might look with Venus’ eyes.
    • O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
    • O useful time for lovers to employ!
    • Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race,
    • Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace!
    • The vows you never will return, receive;
    • And take, at least, the love you will not give.
    • See, while I write, my words are lost in tears!
    • The less my sense, the more my love appears.110
    • Sure ’t was not much to bid one kind adieu
    • (At least to feign was never hard to you):
    • ‘Farewell, my Lesbian love,’ you might have said;
    • Or coldly thus, ‘Farewell, O Lesbian maid!’
    • No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
    • Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
    • No lover’s gift your Sappho could confer,
    • And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
    • No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
    • But this, ‘Be mindful of our loves, and live.’120
    • Now by the Nine, those powers ador’d by me,
    • And Love, the God that ever waits on thee,
    • When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
    • That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
    • Like some sad statue, speechless, pale, I stood,
    • Grief chill’d my breast, and stopt my freezing blood;
    • No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
    • Fix’d in a stupid lethargy of woe:
    • But when its way th’ impetuous passion found,
    • I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound;
    • I rave, then weep; I curse, and then complain;131
    • Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
    • Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,
    • Whose first-born infant feeds the funeral flame.
    • My scornful brother with a smile appears,
    • Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears;
    • His hated image ever haunts my eyes;
    • ‘And why this grief? thy daughter lives,’ he cries,
    • Stung with my love, and furious with despair,
    • All torn my garments, and my bosom bare,
    • My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim,141
    • Such inconsistent things are Love and Shame!
    • ’T is thou art all my care and my delight,
    • My daily longing, and my dream by night:
    • O night more pleasing than the brightest day,
    • When fancy gives what absence takes away,
    • And, dress’d in all its visionary charms,
    • Restores my fair deserter to my arms!
    • Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine;
    • Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine:
    • A thousand tender words I hear and speak;151
    • A thousand melting kisses give and take:
    • Then fiercer joys—I blush to mention these,
    • Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.
    • But when, with day, the sweet delusions fly,
    • And all things wake to life and joy but I,
    • As if once more forsaken, I complain,
    • And close my eyes to dream of you again:
    • Then frantic rise, and like some fury rove
    • Thro’ lonely plains, and thro’ the silent grove;160
    • As if the silent grove, and lonely plains,
    • That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.
    • I view the grotto, once the scene of love,
    • The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,
    • That charm’d me more, with native moss o’ergrown,
    • Than Phrygian marble, or the Parian stone:
    • I find the shades that veil’d our joys before;
    • But, Phaon gone, those shades delight no more.
    • Here the press’d herbs with bending tops betray
    • Where oft entwin’d in am’rous folds we lay;170
    • I kiss that earth which once was press’d by you,
    • And all with tears the with’ring herbs bedew.
    • For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,
    • And birds defer their songs till thy return:
    • Night shades the groves, and all in silence lie,
    • All but the mournful Philomel and I:
    • With mournful Philomel I join my strain,
    • Of Tereus she, of Phaon I complain.
    • A spring there is, whose silver waters show,
    • Clear as a glass, the shining sands below:
    • A flowery lotos spreads its arms above,181
    • Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove;
    • Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
    • Watch’d by the sylvan genius of the place.
    • Here as I lay, and swell’d with tears the flood,
    • Before my sight a wat’ry virgin stood:
    • She stood and cried, ‘O you that love in vain!
    • Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main.
    • There stands a rock, from whose impending steep
    • Apollo’s fane surveys the rolling deep;190
    • There injur’d lovers, leaping from above,
    • Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.
    • Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn’d;
    • In vain he lov’d, relentless Pyrrha scorn’d;
    • But when from hence he plunged into the main,
    • Deucalion scorn’d, and Pyrrha lov’d in vain.
    • Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
    • Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!’
    • She spoke, and vanish’d with the voice—I rise,
    • And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.200
    • I go, ye Nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove;
    • How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
    • I go, ye Nymphs! where furious love inspires,
    • Let female fears submit to female fires.
    • To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon’s hate,
    • And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
    • Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
    • And softly lay me on the waves below!
    • And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain, }
    • Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o’er the main,210 }
    • Nor let a lover’s death the guiltless flood profane; }
    • On Phœbus’ shrine my harp I’ll then bestow,
    • And this inscription shall be placed below:
    • ‘Here she who sung, to him that did inspire,
    • Sappho to Phœbus consecrates her lyre;
    • What suits with Sappho, Phœbus, suits with thee;
    • The Gift, the Giver, and the God agree.’
    • But why, alas! relentless youth, ah why
    • To distant seas must tender Sappho fly?
    • Thy charms than those may far more powerful be,220
    • And Phœbus’ self is less a God to me.
    • Ah! canst thou doom me to the rocks and sea,
    • Oh! far more faithless and more hard than they?
    • Ah! canst thou rather see this tender breast
    • Dash’d on these rocks than to thy bosom press’d?
    • This breast which once, in vain! you liked so well
    • Where the Loves play’d, and where the Muses dwell.
    • Alas! the Muses now no more inspire;
    • Untuned my lute, and silent is my lyre.229
    • My languid numbers have forgot to flow,
    • And fancy sinks beneath a weight of woe.
    • Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
    • Themes of my verse, and objects of my flames,
    • No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
    • No more these hands shall touch the trembling string:
    • My Phaon’s fled, and I those arts resign;
    • (Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)
    • Return, fair youth, return, and bring along
    • Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:239
    • Absent from thee, the poet’s flame expires;
    • But ah! how fiercely burn the lover’s fires!
    • Gods! can no prayers, no sighs, no numbers move
    • One savage heart, or teach it how to love?
    • The winds my prayers, my sighs, my numbers bear,
    • The flying winds have lost them all in air!
    • Oh when, alas! shall more auspicious gales
    • To these fond eyes restore thy welcome sails!
    • If you return—ah, why these long delays?
    • Poor Sappho dies while careless Phaon stays.
    • O launch thy bark, nor fear the wat’ry plain;250
    • Venus for thee shall smooth her native main.
    • O launch thy bark, secure of prosp’rous gales;
    • Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sails.
    • If you will fly—(yet ah! what cause can be,
    • Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?)
    • If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
    • Ah let me seek it from the raging seas:
    • To raging seas unpitied I ’ll remove,
    • And either cease to live or cease to love!