Proud-pied April: Fragrant-blossomed gifts

We’ve not had anything from Sappho for a couple of years of National Poetry Month, so let’s remedy that.

You’ll recall that very little of her work is around these days because in 380 C.E. the early Christian church fathers destroyed most of everything she produced. She had at least two strikes against her, being female and pre-Christian, so all that’s left is a couple of poems and fragments.

In “Girls, [you] be ardent”, we get some hard truth: so much of literature speaks of the strengths and beauties of youth, not so much of the ravages of age. Yet it’s mortals’ fate to grow old (if you’re lucky). Even if you marry into the family of gods.

(When Eos stole Tithonus to be her lover, she petitioned Zeus to grant the man immortality, but she forgot to specify that she wanted eternal youth. And she got precisely what she’d asked for.)

Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed

Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre:

But now old age has seized my tender body,

Now my hair is white, and no longer dark.

My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me,

That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance.

I grieve often for my state; what can I do?

Being human, there’s no way not to grow old.

Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten,

Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end:

Handsome and young he was then, yet at last

Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife.