Strange murmurs drown my ears;
With dewy damps my limbs are chilled;
An icy shiver shakes my frame;
Paler than ashes grows my cheek;
And Death seems nigh at hand.”

3
Is it not wonderful how at the same moment soul, body, ears, tongue,
eyes, colour, all fail her, and are lost to her as completely as if they
were not her own? Observe too how her sensations contradict one
another--she freezes, she burns, she raves, she reasons, and all at the
same instant. And this description is designed to show that she is
assailed, not by any particular emotion, but by a tumult of different
emotions. All these tokens belong to the passion of love; but it is in
the choice, as I said, of the most striking features, and in the
combination of them into one picture, that the perfection of this Ode of
Sappho’s lies. Similarly Homer in his descriptions of tempests always
picks out the most terrific circumstances.

4
The poet of the “Arimaspeia” intended the following lines to be grand--

“Herein I find a wonder passing strange,
That men should make their dwelling on the deep,
Who far from land essaying bold to range
With anxious heart their toilsome vigils keep;
Their eyes are fixed on heaven’s starry steep;
The ravening billows hunger for their lives;
And oft each shivering wretch, constrained to weep,
With suppliant hands to move heaven’s pity strives,