and very truly said: "No man can come close to her."

No; all that we possess of Sappho is gleaned from the dictionary, the
geography, the grammar and the archæological treatise; from a host of
worthy authors who are valued now chiefly for these quotations which
they have enshrined. Here a painful scholar of Alexandria has preserved
the phrase--

"The golden sandalled dawn but now has (waked) me,"

to show how Sappho employed the adverb. Apollonius, to prove that the
Æolic dialect had a particular form for the genitive case of the first
personal pronoun, has treasured up two sad and significant utterances,

"But thou forgettest me!"

and

"Or else thou lovest another than me,"

The Æolic genitive has saved for us another of these sorrow-laden
sentences which Mr. Swinburne has amplified in some beautiful but too
wordy lines. Sappho only says

"I am full weary of Gorgo."

--A few of these fragments tell us of the poet herself.

"I have a daughter like golden flowers, Kleis my beloved, for whom
(I would take) not all Sydia...."