ittle of the
consecration of the priest.

Mrs. Browning is unapproachable by any woman who has ever touched lyre or
blown through reed since the days of the great AEolian poetess. But
Sappho, who, to the antique world was a pillar of flame, is to us but a
pillar of shadow. Of her poems, burnt with other most precious work by
Byzantine Emperor and by Roman Pope, only a few fragments remain.
Possibly they lie mouldering in the scented darkness of an Egyptian tomb,
clasped in the withered hands of some long-dead lover. Some Greek monk
at Athos may even now be poring over an ancient manuscript, whose crabbed
characters conceal lyric or ode by her whom the Greeks spoke of as 'the
Poetess' just as they termed Homer 'the Poet,' who was to them the tenth
Muse, the flower of the Graces, the child of Eros, and the pride of
Hellas--Sappho, with the sweet voice, the bright, beautiful eyes, the
dark hyacinth-coloured hair. But, practically, the work of the
marvellous singer of Lesbos is entirely lost to us.

We have a few rose-leaves out of her garden, that is all. Literature
nowadays survives marble and bronze, but in old days, in spite of the
Roman poet's noble boast, it was not so. The fragile clay vases of the
Greeks still keep for us pictures of Sappho, delicately painted in black
and red and white; but of her song we have only the echo of an echo.

Of all the women of history, Mrs. Browning is the only one that we could
name in any possible or remote conjunction with Sappho.

Sappho was undoubtedly a far more flawless and perfect artist. She
stirred the whole antique world more than Mrs. Browning ever stirred our
modern age. Never had Love such a singer. Even in the few lines that
remain to us the passion seems to scorch and burn. But, as unjust Time,
who has crowned her with the barren laurels of fame, has twined with them
the dull poppies of oblivion, let us turn from the mere memory of a
poetess to one whose song still remains to us as an imperishable glory to
our literature; to her who heard the cry of the children from dark mine
and crowded factory, and made England weep over its little ones; who, in
the feigned sonnets from the Portuguese, sang of the spiritual mystery of
Love, and of the intellectual gifts that Love brings to the soul; who had
faith in all that is worthy, and enthusiasm for all that is great, and
pity for all that suffers; who wrote the Vision of Poets and Casa Guidi
Windows and Aurora Leig