beautiful truth that you learn is an offering to him you love best,
for in giving your whole self, you give your virtues too. But no one
gains this victory in dreams. The dew by which such blossoms are
nourished is called the sweat of man's brow.' So she would speak to me,
and then I started up ashamed and left the hearth, and either took my
lyre to learn new songs, or listened to my loving teacher's words--she
is wiser than most men--attentively and still. And so the time passed
on; a rapid stream, just like our river Nile, which flows unceasingly,
and brings such changing scenes upon its waves, sometimes a golden boat
with streamers gay,--sometimes a fearful, ravenous crocodile."

"But now we are sitting in the golden boat. Oh, if time's waves would
only cease to flow! If this one moment could but last for aye. You
lovely girl, how perfectly you speak, how well you understand and
remember all this beautiful teaching and make it even more beautiful by
your way of repeating it. Yes, Sappho, I am very proud of you. In you
I have a treasure which makes me richer than my brother, though half
the world belongs to him."

"You proud of me? you, a king's son, the best and handsomest of your
family?"

"The greatest worth that I can find in myself is, that you think me
worthy of your love."

"Tell me, ye gods, how can this little heart hold so much joy without
breaking? 'Tis like a vase that's overfilled with purest, heaviest
gold?"

"Another heart will help you to bear it; and that is my own, for mine is