Fragment 93, tr. F. T. Palgrave (1854)

Sappho (630 BC–570 BC), translated by Various (ed. H. T. Wharton) · 1908

iambic tetrameter · 7 lines · from Sappho: Selected Renderings

—O fair—O sweet!As the sweet apple blooms high on the bough,High as the highest, forgot of the gatherers:So thou:—Yet not so: nor forgot of the gatherers;High o'er their reach in the golden air,—O sweet—O fair!

About this text

Fragment 93, tr. F. T. Palgrave (1854) is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation (ed. Henry Thornton Wharton, John Lane, 1908, fifth edition), Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, the Various (ed. H. T. Wharton) translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Sappho, Fragment 93, tr. F. T. Palgrave (1854), in Sappho: Selected Renderings (1908), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sappho-wharton/fr-93.html, id L29197.

Form and metre

Fragment 93, tr. F. T. Palgrave (1854) is 7 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.

See other poems in iambic tetrameter.

Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.

Rhyme words, stanza by stanza

The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.

  1. 1 -ABABCC sweet · boughA · gatherersB · thouA · gatherersB · airC · fairC
Scansion, line by line

Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.

LineSyl.Stress
—O fair—O sweet!4····
As the sweet apple blooms high on the bough,10···/˘·····
High as the highest, forgot of the gatherers:11···/˘˘/··/˘
So thou:—2··
Yet not so: nor forgot of the gatherers;10····˘/··/˘
High o'er their reach in the golden air,9······/˘·
—O sweet—O fair!4····

The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.

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