Description

Autograph poem signed entitled The Sapho Complaint dated Sunday, March 17, 1872, with some erasures and corrections.

This beautiful poem of 8 quatrains, probably intended for a magazine, was never collected in volume. It comes from theFormer Daniel Sickles collection [XIX, 8130].

The Sapho Complaint

Hear wall cry my lyre
Dark cave where the echo sleeps
And you, the hurricane's tearing you apart,
O sea, hear Sapho moaning!

My long desires, my vain terrors...
Have the fury of the bitter stream
This fire burning in my veins
Will you hear it deep sea?

Like you fierce and sublime,
And complaining when the day comes,
I feel a storm's breaking
In my heart altered with love.

Beneath your azure where all fades away
I want to seek quiet shelter;
I need your ice freshness
To refresh my bruised breast.

I'll unroll in your shadow
My long martyred arms
Intoxicate me with your dark emptiness
And savoring your long kisses

Because only you will extinguish the fever
Whose thrill runs through my teeth,
And you will caress my lip
Like burning coals

Take deep, caressing sea
La poétesse à l’oeil de feu
Who, in order to get his absent life back
Would have wished for God's love.

Hide and steal from the greedy people
The warrior-hearted charmer
Who from the ungrateful and empty earth
Bring nothing but a black laurel!

Sunday, March 17, 1872 -Theodore de Bainville.