Fragment 4 (Voigt 2)
4 · Voigt 2And round about the [breeze] murmurs cool through apple-boughs, and slumber streams from quivering leaves.
Ἀμφὶ δὲ ψῦχρον κελάδει δι’ ὔσδων
μαλίνων, αἰθυσσομένων δὲ φύλλων
κῶμα καταρρεῖ
Through orchard-plots with fragrance crowned
The clear cold fountain murmuring flows;
And forest leaves with rustling sound
Invite to soft repose.
— J. H. Merivale.
All around through branches of apple-orchards
Cool streams call, while down from the leaves a-tremble
Slumber distilleth.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.
Professor F. T. Palgrave says:—
‘We have three lines on a garden scene full of the heat and sleep of the fortunate South:—
‘”Round about the cool water thrills through the apple-branches, and sleep flows down upon us in the rustling leaves.”
‘If there were any authority,’ he adds in a note, ‘I should like to translate “through the troughs of apple-wood.” That Eastern mode of garden irrigation gives a much more defined, and hence a more Sappho-like, image than “through the boughs.”’
From the sound of cool waters heard through the green boughs
Of the fruit-bearing trees,
And the rustling breeze,
Deep sleep, as a trance, down over me flows.
— Frederick Tennyson, 1890.
Cited by Hermogenes, about 170 A.D., as an example of simple style, and to show the pleasure given by description. The fragment describes the gardens of the nymphs, which Demetrius, about 150 A.D., says were sung by Sappho. Cf. Theocritus, Idyl vii. 135: ‘High above our heads waved many a poplar, many an elm-tree, while close at hand the sacred water from the Nymph’s own cave welled forth with murmurs musical’ (A. Lang). And Ovid, Heroïd., xv. 157—
A spring there is whose silver waters show, etc.—
(cf. Pope’s translation, infra, p. 194) probably refers to it.