Poetry Archives

I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night.
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek.
And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;
The night went on with me into my dream.
This only I remember, that I cried:
“O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,
Sing me one song of those lost books of yours
For which we poets still go sorrowing;
That when I meet my fellows on the earth
I may rejoice them more than many pearls;”
And she, the sweetly smiling, answered me,
As one who dreams, “I have forgotten them.”