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| Prayer To My Lady Of Paphos Eternal Aphrodite, rainbow-crowned, you cunning, wily child of Zeus, I beg you do not break me, Lady, with the pain of misled love. But come to me, if ever in the past you heard my far-off cries and heeding, came, leaving the golden home of Zeus. In your readied chariot the beautiful swift sparrows bore you, eddying through the mid-air, their wings a-whirr, from heaven to the dark earth. And there they were. And you, Lady of Joy, smiling your immortal smile, asked me what ailed me now, and why I called again, and what did my mad heart most crave; 'Whom shall I, Sappho, lead to be your love? Who wrongs you now? For if she flees you, soon she'll chase, and if she scorns your gifts, why, she will offer hers. And if she does not love you, soon she'll love, even though she does not want.' Now come to me again as well and loose me from this chain of sorrow. Do for my yearning heart all it desires, and be yourself me ally in the chase. Suzy Q. Groden, 1964 |
| You may notice that there is a disagreement in the translations about the gender of the object or Sappho's yearning. This isn't unsurprising really. Apparently based on the gender used in the original Greek it really is a 'she' that Sappho was writing about and this is one of the fragments of her poetry that gives rise to the belief that Sappho was a lesbian. |