Famous Sapphic Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Sapphic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sapphic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sapphic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Sappho
Come back to me Gongyla here tonight 
You my rose with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired. 

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess 
Whom I now beseech 

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish...Read more of this...

On the throne of many hues Immortal Aphrodite

by Sappho
On the throne of many hues Immortal Aphrodite 
child of Zeus weaving wiles--I beg you
not to subdue my spirit Queen 
with pain or sorrow 

but come--if ever before 
having heard my voice from far away
you listened and leaving your father's 
golden home you came 

in your chariot yoked with swift lovely
sparrows bringing you over the dark earth
thick-feathered wings swirling down
from...Read more of this...

Sapphic Fragment

by Thomas Hardy
 "Thou shalt be--Nothing."--Omar Khayyam. 
"Tombless, with no remembrance."--W. Shakespeare. 

Dead shalt thou lie; and nought 
 Be told of thee or thought, 
For thou hast plucked not of the Muses' tree: 
 And even in Hades' halls 
 Amidst thy fellow-thralls 
No friendly shade thy shade shall company!...Read more of this...

Sapphics For Celebrity

by Jennifer Reeser
 In my dream, Celebrity, four pianos
scored the room, and you -- on an antique sofa
near two dark-haired innocents -- asked that I play
something immortal.

Dust motes grayed the air, and a sage-green shadow
draped the walls in color like sifted powder.
I agreed, but wandered, untold, too many
keys to consider....Read more of this...

To Atthis

by Sappho
My Atthis, although our dear Anaktoria
lives in distant Sardis,
she thinks of us constantly, and

of the life we shared in days when for her
you were a splendid goddess,
and your singing gave her deep joy.
 
Now she shines among Lydian women as
when the red-fingered moon
rises after sunset, erasing

stars around her, and pouring light equally
across the salt sea 
and over densely flowered fields;

and...Read more of this...

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