Other translations are more explicit, but the slight ambiguity is present in the Greek, although the consensus is that these lines welcome the goddess from Krete to a temple-grove, likely in Lesbos, Sappho’s home. It is not immediately apparent that the “holy temple” is synonymous with the “graceful grove,” or that it is Kypris, rather than the speaker, who is in Krete.

The first two surviving lines of “Fragment 2,” “here to me from Krete to this holy temple/where is your graceful grove,” are somewhat ambiguous. The next lines are lost, but the last stanza survives, in which the speaker finally addresses Kypris by name and imagines her in the grove, raising a celebratory cup of nectar as part of a festival. In the next stanza, the speaker’s description moves to a field of flowers within the grove, where horses graze and sweet breezes blow. In the next stanza, she continues to paint an appealing picture of the grove, describing the sound of the rain in the wood and the roses interspersed among the trees, before speaking to the more mystical powers of the sacred place, which brings sleep to its visitors. The speaker begins by describing a beautiful orchard of apple trees studded with altars which burn incense in devotion to the goddess. “Fragment 2” is an appeal to Kypris, or the goddess Aphrodite, to come from far off Krete to a beautiful temple where the speaker resides.

Sappho the poems and fragments