monious like a well-tuned lute. You cannot serve the man to
whom you have given your whole heart,--to whom in your great love you
look up as so much higher than yourself--you cannot prove the
steadfastness and faithfulness of that love better, than by raising and
improving your mind to the utmost of your power. Every good and 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. B