Sappho Redivivus-A Fragment by Robert Burns
The speaker laments a life of abandonment, poverty, and public scorn. Once supported by a family able to feed others, the speaker has lost even the means of survival through legal conflict and must depend on the humble charity of former beneficiaries, whose sincere sympathy is valued above the cold refinement of fashionable minds. Prudence warns of the world’s judgment, but the speaker rises above it through love, believing that M[ontgomer]y’s reward outweighs every danger. Though wishing M[ontgomer]y safe passage to life’s farthest shore, the speaker cannot bear to be forgotten and pleads to retain even the smallest place in the beloved’s heart. Love is described as a consuming fire, alternately cursed and blessed because it began in a fatal yet enchanting encounter. Law, religion, conscience, and reason all fail to restrain the speaker’s guilty passion. Love defeats every moral and rational resistance, leaving the beloved’s image as the sole ruler of the speaker’s mind and making life and soul seem less dear than M[ontgomer]y.
By Robert Burns · First published 1808 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry, Sapphic Poetry · 529 words
First lines
By all I lov'd, neglected and forgot, / No friendly face e'er lights my squalid cot; / Shunn'd, hated, wrong'd, unpitied, unredrest, / The mock'd quotation of the scorner's jest! / Ev'n the poor support of my wretched life, / Snatched by the violence of legal strife. / Oft grateful for my very daily bread / To those my family's once large bounty fed; / A welcome inmate at their homely fare, / My griefs, my woes, my sighs, my tears they share: / (Their vulgar souls unlike the souls refin'd, / The fashioned marble of the polished mind).
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The work is a highly emotional first-person poem centered on the speaker's private suffering, longing, and overpowering passion.
- Love Poetry — Its governing subject is obsessive, idealized love for Montgomery, whom the speaker values above worldly security, life, and soul.
- Sapphic Poetry — The title invokes Sappho, while the poem adopts an intense voice of erotic desire, abandonment, emotional extremity, and socially condemned love associated with the Sapphic tradition.
- Dramatic Monologue — A single distressed speaker directly reveals her circumstances, conscience, desires, and conflicted attachment to an absent beloved.
Tags
love lyric · unrequited love · forbidden passion · abandonment · poverty · social ostracism · legal conflict · public scorn · humble charity · class criticism · romantic obsession · desperate longing
What this Textopian page supports
Sappho Redivivus-A Fragment is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Burns, dated 1808 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Burns
- Date: 1808 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry, Sapphic Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Confessional Poetry
- Length: 529 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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- Work identity for Sappho Redivivus-A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
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