Page:Sappho and the Vigil of Venus (1920).djvu/40

20 More golden than all gold your tresses are:

Never was harp-note like your voice, my love,

Your voice sweet-ringing.

This is the lamentation-song

For Adonis—woe for Adonis, woe!

Thus wailed Aphrodite in anguish-throe,

As she strove to hold him back from death:

"Let thine heart not faint, O love! Be strong!

O me, it burns me, thy failing breath!

It kindles through all my being a fire!

My heart is aflame with despairing desire!"

She calls to her Eros of golden wing,

She bids him steep in the ice-cold spring

Fine linen, and lay on Adonis' brow:—

"O love, let its coolness revive thee now!

Vain, vain!—his eyes see me no more;

They are fixed in a gaze upon Hades' door!

They close—he sleeps—not the sleep of the dead!

Hush, stir not a pebble with heedless tread!

No, no! this is death! Now remaineth to me

No sweetness on earth—nor honey nor bee!"