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Before the era of luminous rationalism, the Classical Greeks idealized beauty and Eros. Sappho, the poet from the Aegean island of Lesbos, best exemplified this sensibility with a pure lyricism, full of Dionysian impulses and dynamism. For 25 centuries her love poems have survived, albeit in fragments, because they affirm the senses of beauty.
Come back again, I beg you, Gongyla.Reveal yourself in your garmentwhite as milk; o what desireforever around you, my lovely girl.This charming garment stirs herwho beholds you, for she who expressesthis reproach to you is the goddess herselfCyprus-born, whom now I invoke.