"Think of all the wonderful love we had, of scenes with beds of flowers, the richness of scent, and color, and garlands on your neck, and couch and love. This has been, and is your comfort for what we had, think of this and not of what you lose....."

Sappho changes the tone from the girls's tearful emotional burst, to a tapestry of mixed lovingness, flowers' hues, the setting of love . . . . this is what you have to remember. Think not of an unknown future, but a beautiful past, which is good psychological counseling indeed. The tuning of this personal interchange between the two women, so simply put in direct quoted speech fragments, gives not only a sense of reality of a living moment; but also marks the closeness between the two women. Directly quoted speech is always alive, something Sappho had also learned from Homer, whose epics are more than half in direct speech.