Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/352

316 was able to make out at first, for the paper-knife loitered dreamily among the opening pages, till at last with the turning of a page, the prose suddenly gave place to a page prettily broken up with lines and half-lines of italics, followed—by a verse or two and "Of course," I exclaimed to myself, with a curious involuntary gratitude, "it is Dr. Wharton's Sappho"

And so it was. That penny bus was thus carelessly carrying along the most priceless of written words. We were journeying in the same conveyance with

Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig—which the pluckers forgot somehow Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now."

with

I loved thee, Atthis, long ago."

with

by, and I sleep alone."

Yes, it was no less a presence than Sappho's that had stepped in amongst us at the corner of New Oxford Street. Visibly it had been a little black-bearded bookman, rather French in appearance, possibly a hard-worked teacher of languages—but actually it had been Sappho. So strange are the contrasts of the modern world, so strange the fate of beautiful words. Two thousand five hundred years! So far away from us was the voice that had suddenly called to us, a lovely apparition of sound, as we trundled dustily from Oxford Circus to the Bank.

"The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, the time is going by, and I sleep alone," I murmured, as the conductor dropped me at Chancery Lane.