Poet and prose writer, Walter Savage Landor was born at Ipsley Court, Warwick in the English midlands The son of a doctor and a wealthy mother, he was educated at Rugby from which he was removed for insolence. He was also suspended from Trinity College, Oxford for firing off a shotgun in his rooms. In 1808 he fought as a volunteer for the Spanish War of Liberation against the French, subsidising it personally. A poet a writer and a classical Scholar who's work was often controversial this lovely poem/song is a translation from Sappho circa 630 bc one of the great classical Greek lyrists and one of the few female scholars of the period remembered today. She was wealthy by marriage and able to devote her life on the island of Lesbos toa study of the arts.
Here it is performed by myself in the form of a chant....

Heres a link to the page where you can listen to this and many other classic poems set to music....

Song by Sappho translted from classical Greek by W S Landor



Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh, if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, whoever felt as I ?


Regards.

Jim Clark

PS..Dont forget you can if you prefer listen to many of my my sound poems at my Yahoo "sound poetry" web group (look in "files") heres that link.. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloozman_uk/