Page:Sappho and the Vigil of Venus (1920).djvu/46

26 Sights on earth: I say that my love of all is

Sweetest and rarest.

Hear the proof, which lightly, I wot, convinces:—

'Mid the comely, Helen would fain discover

One without peer, and of the goodly princes

Chose for her lover

Him who brought the glory of Troy to ruin!

Reckless all of parent and child, she lavished

On the alien love for her own undoing;

Troyward was ravished.

Anactoria—she who contemns the blessing

Near at hand, is like to a reed wind-shaken.

Such are you!—love held in secure possessing

You have forsaken,

Her whose footfall's music myself had rather

Hear, and see her face in its beauty beaming,

Than to gaze where horsemen and footmen gather

Panoply-gleaming.

What is best is set above man's attaining;

Yet, if Fortune smiled on us once, 'tis better

To recall with prayer and with upward-straining

Than to forget her.