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| LOVE’S priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, | |
| Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love, | |
| Name above all names that are lights above, | |
| We have lov’d, prais’d, pitied, crown’d, and done thee wrong, | |
| O thou past praise and pity; thou the sole | 5 |
| Utterly deathless, perfect only and whole | |
| Immortal, body and soul. | |
| For over all whom time hath overpast | |
| The shadow of sleep inexorable is cast, | |
| The implacable sweet shadow of perfect sleep | 10 |
| That gives not back what life gives death to keep; | |
| Yea, all that liv’d and lov’d and sang and sinn’d | |
| Are all borne down death’s cold, sweet, soundless wind | |
| That blows all night and knows not whom its breath, | |
| Darkling, may touch to death: | 15 |
| But one that wind hath touch’d and changed not,—one | |
| Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun; | |
| One that earth’s fire could burn not, nor the sea | |
| Quench; nor might human doom take hold on thee; | |
| All praise, all pity, all dreams have done thee wrong, | 20 |
| All love, with eyes love-blinded from above; | |
| Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love, | |
| Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song. | |
| |
| Hast thou none other answer then for me | |
| Than the air may have of thee, | 25 |
| Or the earth’s warm woodlands girdling with green girth | |
| Thy secret, sleepless, burning life on earth, | |
| Or even the sea that once, being woman crown’d | |
| And girt with fire and glory of anguish round, | |
| Thou wert so fain to seek to, fain to crave | 30 |
| If she would hear thee and save | |
| And give thee comfort of thy great green grave? | |
| Because I have known thee always who thou art, | |
| Thou knowest, have known thee to thy heart’s own heart, | |
| Nor ever have given light ear to storied song | 35 |
| That did thy sweet name sweet unwitting wrong, | |
| Nor ever have call’d thee nor would call for shame, | |
| Thou knowest, but inly by thine only name, | |
| Sappho—because I have known thee and lov’d, hast thou | |
| None other answer now? | 40 |
| As brother and sister were we, child and bird, | |
| Since thy first Lesbian word | |
| Flam’d on me, and I knew not whence I knew, | |
| This was the song that struck my whole soul through, | |
| Pierced my keen spirit of sense with edge more keen, | 45 |
| Even when I knew not,—even ere sooth was seen,— | |
| When thou wast but the tawny sweet wing’d thing | |
| Whose cry was but of spring. | |
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