Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/100

94

Bergk suggests that the words may have preceded these words. The fragment is quoted by Apollonius, and its sense may be: “when all night long sleep holds their eyes.”

Come, O come, divinest shell,

And in my ear all thy secrets tell.

Quoted by Hermogenes and Eustathius. Sappho is apparently addressing her lyre. The legend is that Hermes is supposed to have made the first lyre by stretching the strings across the cavity of a tortoise’s shell.

Quoted by Athenaeus.