Starry Night, Sappho

The moon is gone from the sky,
The Pleiades are setting.
It’s midnight and the time slips by,
And in my bed alone I lie.

     Additional verses:

The moon is gone from the sky,
The Seven Stars are setting.
It’s midnight and the time slips by,
And in my bed alone I lie.

The moon is gone from the sky,
The sister lights are setting.
It’s midnight and the time slips by,
And in my bed alone I lie.

The moon is gone from the sky,
The harbor lights are setting.
It’s midnight and the time slips by,
And on my bed alone I lie.

. . .

Kind of a Skeeter Davis song. “Pleiades” isn’t in the American vernacular because Americans aren’t aware of the stars as we assume the ancient Greeks were. The Pleiades are 7 stars in the constellation Taurus. They’re also known as the Seven Sisters. I made a four-stanza poem solving the Pleiades problem differently in each stanza (the Skeeter song obviously needed more than one verse).

I play it on the banjo to the tune of "No One Can Love Me Like Jesus," by Bert Hare.

Transliteration of the Greek by J.B Hare, from this fantastic web site: http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sappho/sappho2.htm#48

De'duke men a' sela'nna

kai` Plhï'ades, me'sai de`

nu'ktes pa'ra d' e'rxet' w' 'ra,

e'gw de mo'na kateu'dw.

Literal translation from the web site: The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, the time is going by and I recline alone.

1883 translation by J.A. Symonds, quoted on the site, which seems to follow the rhythm of the transliteration better than some more recent translations:

The Moon has left the sky,

Lost is the Pleiads' light;

     It is midnight,

     And time slips by,

But on my couch alone I lie.

             J. A. Symonds, 1883.

The web site says that the poem was preserved by being quoted by Hephaestion as an example of metre. With the "Hymn to Aphrodite" it was the first portion of the Poems of Sappho to be printed in 1554.