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The dawn was rising, the sea beat the shore;
Thus spoke Sappho standing on the shore,
And near her, on their knees, the daughters of Lesbos
Leaned over the abyss and gazed at the waves:
Fatal rock, deep abyss!
I approach you without fear!
You are about to steal from Venus her victim:
I failed to recognize love, love punishes my crime.
O Neptune! your waves will be gentler to me!
Do you see with what flowers I have crowned my head?
See: this brow, so long burdened with my sorrow,
Adorned for my death as for a feast,
With the solemn band glitters today!
They say that in your bosom… but I cannot believe it!
One escapes the wrath of implacable Love;
They say that, through your care, if one is reborn to the light,
One loses the memory of a mad flame!
But from the abyss, O god! whatever the help may be,
Beware, beware of preserving my days!
I do not come to seek in your propitious waves
A passing oblivion, vain remedy for my ills!
I come, I come to find the calm of the tomb!
Receive, O king of the seas, my joyful sacrifices!
And you, why these tears? why these vain sobs?
Sing, sing a hymn, O virgins of Lesbos!
Importunate memories, will you follow me without cease?
It was under the groves of the temple of Venus;
I myself, insensitive priestess of Venus,
Was singing on the lyre a hymn to the goddess:
At the feet of her altars, suddenly I saw you!
Gods! what new transports! O gods! how to describe
All the fires with which my breast was filled at once?
My tongue froze, I remained voiceless,
And my trembling hand let fall my lyre!
No: never to the eyes of the ungrateful Daphne
Did you appear more beautiful, divine son of Latona;
Never with the thyrsus in hand, crowned with vine leaves,
The young god of India, dragged in triumph,
Appeared more brilliant to the eyes of Erigone.
Everything faded… of him alone I remembered, alas!
Without blushing at my flame, at all times, at every hour,
I wandered alone and pensive around his dwelling.
A power more than human chained me to his steps!
How I loved to see him, with the crowd intoxicated,
At the gymnasium, at the theater, drawing all eyes,
Hurling the discus far, with a steady hand,
And surpassing all his rivals in our games!
How I loved to see him, leaning over the mane
Of a horse of Elis as swift as the winds,
Darting first to the end of the course,
And, his brow crowned, returning with slow steps!
Ah! in all his successes, how proud my soul was!
And if from that beautiful brow moist with sweat
I could only have wiped the dust…
O gods! I would have given everything, even my beauty,
To be for a single moment either his sister or his mother!
You, who could never do anything for my happiness!
Vain divinities of the banks of Permessus,
I myself, in your arts, instructed his youth;
I composed for him these songs full of sweetness,
These songs that earned me the transports of Greece:
These songs, which would soften the rigor of the Underworld,
Unhappy Sappho! could not soften his heart,
And his ingratitude repaid your tenderness!
Redouble your sighs! redouble your sobs!
Weep! weep for my shame, O daughters of Lesbos!
If the ingrate, however, had allowed himself to be touched!
If my care, if my songs, if my too feeble charms
Could have torn him from his indifference!
If he had at least been moved by my tears!
Never for a mortal, never would the hand of the gods
Have spun days more sweet, more glorious!
What brilliance this love would have cast on his life!
His days could have made even those gods envious!
And the lover of Sappho, famous throughout the universe,
Would have been, like them, immortal in my verses!
It is for him that I would have, on your propitious altars,
Made the incense of sacrifices smoke at all times,
O Venus! it is for him that I would have night and day
Hung some offering on the altars of Love!
It is for him that I would have, during entire nights,
Addressed my prayers to the three fatal sisters!
Or else that, taking up my melodious lute,
I would have repeated the airs that pleased him most!
For him I would have wished in the games of Ionia
To dispute with the victors the palms of genius!
How those brilliant laurels offered to my pride
In gathering them for him would have been dearer to me!
I would have laid at his feet the prize of my victory,
And crowned his brow with the rays of my glory.
Often, lowering my pride to prayer,
At your door, O Phaon! I went to kiss the threshold.
At least, I said, at least, if your jealous rigor
Refuses me forever that sweet title of wife,
Allow, O too dear child, that Sappho, near you,
A slave if you wish, may live at least under your law!
What do I care for that name and that ignominy!
Provided that at your side I consume my life!
Provided that I see you, and that on my last day
With a look of pity you may take pity on so much love!
Do not fear my perils, do not fear my weakness;
Venus will equal my strength to my tenderness.
On the waves, on the earth, attached to your steps,
You will see me follow you amid combats;
You will see me, facing the fury of Mars,
Turning aside all the arrows that threaten your life,
Between death and you always ready to run…
Too happy for him if I could have died!
When at last, weary of the labors of Bellona,
Under the tent your soul abandons itself to sleep,
That sleep, O Phaon! which is no longer made for me,
Will leave me alone watching around you!
And if some care comes to reopen your eyelid,
Seated at your side during the entire night,
My lute on my knees sighing my love,
I will charm your pain while awaiting the day!
I was saying; and the winds carried away my prayer!
Echo alone repeated my solitary complaint;
And echo alone still answers my sobs!
Weep! weep for my shame, O daughters of Lesbos!
You who were once my happiness and my glory!
O lyre! that my hand made resound for him,
Your aspect that I loved importunes me today,
And each of your airs recalls to my memory
Both my fires, and my shame, and the ingrate who fled from me!
Break in my hands, lyre forever fatal!
On the altars of Venus, in her sacred precincts
I do not hang you! may celestial wrath
On these stormy waves scatter your debris!
And may no vestige of my torments remain!
Would that I could likewise engulf in these seas
Both my fatal glory, and my songs, and my verses!
Would that I could erase my traces from the earth!
Would that I could descend whole into the Underworld!
And, burning these writings in which Phaon must live,
Carry away with me the opprobrium of my name!
Meanwhile, if the gods whom his rigor outrages
Were at this instant urging his steps toward the shore?
If from this supreme place he could approach?
If he came to contemplate on the fatal rock
Sappho, eyes in tears, wandering, disheveled,
Striking the desolate shore with vain sobs,
Still burning for him, forgiving him her fate,
And slowly preparing the arrangements for her death?
No doubt, at this sight, touched by my torture,
He would repent of his long injustice?
No doubt, letting himself be disarmed by my tears,
He would say to Sappho: Live still to love!
What have I said? Far from me perhaps some remorse,
In default of love, may have been born in his heart:
Perhaps in his flight, warned by the gods,
He shudders, he stops, he returns toward these places?
He returns to stop me on the edges of the abyss;
He returns!… he calls me… he saves his victim!…
Oh! what do I hear?… listen… from the direction of Lesbos
A distant clamor has struck the echoes!
I recognized the accent of that voice so dear,
I saw dust rising on the path!
O virgins! look! do you not see him
Coming down the hill and holding out his arms to me?…
But no! all is mute in all nature,
A silence of death reigns far off over the earth:
The path is deserted!… I hear only the waves…
Weep! weep for my shame, O daughters of Lesbos!
But already, springing toward the heavens it colors,
The sun hastens the course of its chariot.
You who come to begin the last of my days,
Farewell last sun! farewell supreme dawn!
Tomorrow from the bosom of the waves you will spring forth again,
And I, I die! and I, I am extinguished forever!
Farewell paternal fields! farewell sweet country!
Farewell dear Lesbos consecrated to Venus!
Shore where I received the light of the heavens!
August temple where my mother, on the days of my birth,
With a trembling hand consecrating me to the gods,
Dedicated my childhood to the worship of Venus!
And you, sacred forest, where the daughters of Heaven,
Surrounding my cradle, nourished me with their honey,
Farewell! Their vain gifts that the vulgar envy,
Neither against the arrows of Love, nor the blows of destiny,
Miserable Sappho! could save your life!
You lived in tears, and you die in the morning!
Thus falls a flower withered before its time!
Thus, cruel Love, under the mortal knife,
A young victim brought to your temple,
Whom at birth the shepherd destined for your worship,
Comes to fall before her age at the foot of your altar!
And you who will see again the cruel one I adore
When the shadow of death has covered my eyes,
Companions of Sappho, carry him these farewells!
Tell him… that in dying I still named him!
She said, and in the evening, leaving the edge of the waves,
You returned without her, O virgins of Lesbos!
Alphonse de Lamartine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-sappho-alphonse-de-lamartine/