"A Dream of Sappho"

A Dream of Sappho

The little hollows in the pavements shine

            With the soft, hesitating April rain,

            That sifts across the city, gray and fine,

And on the huddling, spent waves of the main,―

Where the wild, silver seabirds wheel and scream.

            It is a day to lie before the fire,

            Turning the key on Thought and Care, and dream

Of dark-eyed Sappho and her passioned lyre;

Her sun-warmed courts columned above the sea;

            Blue skies of Lesbos―ay, and of the kiss

            Of the South wind among her bower’s leaves.

Who could regret the day’s monotony,

            In the full rapture of a dream like this―

            Set to the faltering music of the eaves!

"A Dream of Sappho" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).