A new poem by Sappho

Martin West is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the translator of the Oxford World's Classics Greek Lyric Poetry,1999. Martin West in the issue The Times Literary Supplement June 24,2005 p.8 translates the discovered poem of Sappho. He writes " The poem is a small masterpiece: simple, comcise. perfectly formed, an honest, unpretentious expression of human feeling, dignified in its restraint . It moves both by what it leaves unspoken. It gives us no ground for thinking that Sappho's poetic reputation wa unreserved.

[ You for] the fragrant-bosomed [Muses'] lovely gifts
[be zeakous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair's turned[white] instead of dark;

my heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I oft bemoan; but what's to do
Not to grow old, being human, there 's no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world's end,

handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o'ertook him, husband of immortal wife.

TLS has the greek text.

FZline invites to read the classics. Their so close to us.