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The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore

Collected by Himself. In Ten Volumes
  

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SONG.

As o'er her loom the Lesbian Maid
In love-sick languor hung her head,
Unknowing where her fingers stray'd,
She weeping turn'd away, and said,
“Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain—
“I cannot weave, as once I wove—

14

“So wilder'd is my heart and brain
“With thinking of that youth I love!”
Again the web she tried to trace,
But tears fell o'er each tangled thread;
While, looking in her mother's face,
Who watchful o'er her lean'd, she said,
“Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain—
“I cannot weave, as once I wove—
“So wilder'd is my heart and brain
“With thinking of that youth I love!”
 

I have attempted, in these four lines, to give some idea of that beautiful fragment of Sappho, beginning

Γλυκεια ματερ,
which represents so truly (as Warton remarks) “the languor and listlessness of a person deeply in love.”