beautiful truth that you learn is an offering to him you love best, for
in giving your whole self, you give your virtues too. But no one gains
this victory in dreams. The dew by which such blossoms are nourished is
called the sweat of man's brow.' So she would speak to me, and then I
started up ashamed and left the hearth, and either took my lyre to learn
new songs, or listened to my loving teacher's words--she is wiser than
most men--attentively and still. And so the time passed on; a rapid
stream, just like our river Nile, which flows unceasingly, and brings
such changing scenes upon its waves, sometimes a golden boat with
streamers gay,--sometimes a fearful, ravenous crocodile."

"But now we are sitting in the golden boat. Oh, if time's waves would
only cease to flow! If this one moment could but last for aye. You
lovely girl, how perfectly you speak, how well you understand and
remember all this beautiful teaching and make it even more beautiful by
your way of repeating it. Yes, Sappho, I am very proud of you. In you I
have a treasure which makes me richer than my brother, though half the
world belongs to him."

"You proud of me? you, a king's son, the best and handsomest of your
family?"

"The greatest worth that I can find in myself is, that you think me
worthy of your love."

"Tell me, ye gods, how can this little heart hold so much joy without
breaking? 'Tis like a vase that's overfilled with purest, heaviest
gold?"

"Another heart will help you to bear it; and that is my own, for mine is
again supported by yours, and with that help I can laugh at every evil
that the world or night may bring."

"Oh, don't excite the envy of the gods; human happiness often vexes
them. Since you left us we have passed some very, very sad days. The
two poor children of our kind Phanes--a boy as beautiful as Eros, and a
little girl as fair and rosy as a summer morning's cloud just lit up
by the sun,--came for some happy days to stay with us. Grandmother grew
quite glad and young again while looking on these little ones, and as
for me I gave them all my heart, though really it is your's and your's
alone. But hearts, you know, are wonderfully made; they're like the sun
who sends his rays everywhere, and loses neither warmth nor light by
giving much, but gives to all their due. I loved those little ones so
very much. One evening we were sitting quite alone with Theopompus in
the women's room, when suddenly we heard aloud, wild