Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/32

26 ments were popular, and of them there were several varieties in use, one of which, the, apparently a sort of small harp, is said to have been first used by Sappho herself. One or two other varieties of instruments, also stringed, are mentioned, but at this late date their identification is uncertain, although in at least two instances their names are known.

To judge by what remains of them, many of the poems were particularly suitable for recitative chanting in conjunction with such musical instruments.

The metres in which Sappho wrote were several. She used pre-eminently that known as Sapphic, but she also wrote in Alcaic, choriambic, and several others, all apparently with equal facility and delicacy. The metre known as Sapphic was not actually invented by Sappho herself, for it had been in use before her time, but she adopted it in many of her poems, and her use of it was so successful that it soon became associated with her name. Many of the fragments apparently belong to poems which contain very beautiful descriptions of natural phenomena or allusions to such things, and these have nothing to do with the passionate quality found in much that Sappho wrote. So much attention has been lavished upon these poems which contain descriptions of some sort of passionate devotion or invocation that the nature poems and some of those which evidently had a wonderful, wistful, and haunting quality of reminis-