For me, this is the most striking of Sappho's poems, the way she describes the age old emotion that is love. It's nice to think of her there, laid perhaps on a grassy mound, watching the one she loves with another.

She doesn't hide any emotions, and thats what really strikes me in the poem, it's as if she is taking the reader to that precise moment, as if no time has passed, that the scene, like her legacy, lives on forever.

ODE TO ANACTORIA

That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy presence, and hears close to him thy sweet speech and lovely laughter; that indeed makes my heart flutter in my bosom. For when I see thee but a little, I have no utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and straightway a subtle fire has run under my skin, with my eyes I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours down, and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than grass, and seem in my madness little better than one dead. But I must dare all, since one so poor ...

For me, this is the most striking of Sappho's poems, the way she describes the age old emotion that is love. It's nice to think of her there, laid perhaps on a grassy mound, watching the one she loves with another.

She doesn't hide any emotions, and thats what really strikes me in the poem, it's as if she is taking the reader to that precise moment, as if no time has passed, that the scene, like her legacy, lives on forever.

ODE TO ANACTORIA

That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy presence, and hears close to him thy sweet speech and lovely laughter; that indeed makes my heart flutter in my bosom. For when I see thee but a little, I have no utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and straightway a subtle fire has run under my skin, with my eyes I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours down, and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than grass, and seem in my madness little better than one dead. But I must dare all, since one so poor ...