Lyric Poem · Love
The Moon Has Left the Sky (the Midnight Poem)
by Sappho · translated by John Addington Symonds
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.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“The Moon Has Left the Sky (the Midnight Poem)” by Sappho — quilloak.com/poems/sappho-the-moon-has-left-the-sky
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Moon Has Left the Sky (the Midnight Poem)
- Poet
- Sappho
- Length
- 5 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Love, Grief, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 5 lines · one 5-line stanza
- End rhyme
- ABCAA.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
The translation is treated as a separate work and reviewed from the cited historical edition.
- Author record
- Sapphoc. 630–570 BC
- Source record
- Cited historical translationThe Moon Has Left the Sky (the Midnight Poem); 1883; reprinted in H. T. Wharton's Sappho, 1885
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1883; reprinted in H. T. Wharton's Sappho, 1885
- Translation
- John Addington Symonds
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 44f699654a85552b…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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