Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/28

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Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English

perfect. The poem has been cleverly emended by Mr. J. M. Edmonds of Cambridge, and it was published with a literal translation in the “Times,” 4 May 1914. Such discoveries keep alive in us the hope that the future may be still kinder to us and that some day the Egyptian sands will give up a considerable proportion of the nine books of lyrics. An interesting point in connection with this most recent discovery is that Wharton, quoting from Apollonius, in the fragment which he numbers 13, gives it as:

Ἔγω δὲ κήν᾽ ὄτ-
τω τις ἔραται.

We are now able to expand this fragment into nearly the whole of a poem, for this is the ending of the first stanza of this latest addition to what remains to us of the efflorescence of Sappho’s poetic genius.


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