V.  FRAGMENTS FROM SAPPHO

152

XCIV

As on the hills the shepherds trample the hyacinth under foot, and the flower darkens on the ground.

Compare Catullus, xi. 21-24: —

Think not henceforth, thou, to recall Catullus’
Love; thy own sin slew it, as on the meadow’s
Verge declines, un-gently beneath the plough-
            share,
     Stricken, a flower.

ROBINSON ELLIS.

And Virgil, Aeneid, ix. 435, of Euryalus
           dying: —

And like the purple flower the plough cuts
       down
He droops and dies.



Pines she like to the hyacinth out on the path
       by the hill top;
Shepherds tread it aside, and its purples lie
       lost on the herbage.

EDWIN ARNOLD, 1869.

153

ONE GIRL.
(A COMBINATION FROM SAPPHO.)

I

Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the
       topmost bough,
A-top on the topmost twig, — which the
       pluckers forgot, somehow, —
Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none
       could get it till now.

II

Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the
       hills is found,
Which the passing feet of the shepherds for
       ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden into the
       ground.

D. G. ROSETTI, 1870;

in 1881 he altered the title to Beauty. (A combination from Sappho.)