“Once Sappho Sang” | Ella Higginson

When love was in its passion-rose,

You said—“You’ll sing of this,

And crown your brow with laurel-leaves”

I promised with a kiss.

But when love was in its passion-rose

I could not sing, nor laugh—

Though I was born to merriment,

To singing and to chaff.

Now love has lost its passion-rose,

Dead-petalled on its thorn—

I sing from morn till evening . . .

But I weep from eve till morn!

A draft of “Once Sappho Sang” with Higginson’s revisions, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington.

“Once Sappho Sang” in Ella Higginson: A Tribute (1941), edited and printed in Bellingham by the Washington State Federation of Women’s Clubs in honor and memory of Higginson the year after her death.