Mary Robinson imagines Sappho, the legendary Greek poet, speaking directly to her unfaithful lover Phaon as he sets off for Mount Aetna’s “scorching sands.” The speaker is furious and heartbroken, unable to bear the thought of Sicilian women catching his eye. She asks bitter, rhetorical questions: can other charms really attract him while she, the great Sappho, dies of despair? The poem sets up a painful contrast between the volcano’s heat and the fiercer fire of her own jealousy and desire. Rather than physical flames, she burns with rejection. She pictures Phaon being crowned with poppies or lingering in the groves of love, while she is left with funeral cypress wreaths. In the last two lines, her pleas shift from accusation to a desperate bargain: offer me one kind word to ease my pain, or let me sleep forever. The mood is urgent, passionate, and entirely consumed by longing.
Sonnet XXIII: To Aetna's Scorching Sands — Summary
To AEtna's scorching sands my Phaon flies! False Youth! can other charms attractive prove? Say, can Sicilian loves thy passions move, Play round thy heart, and fix thy fickle eyes, While in despair the Lesbian Sappho dies? Has Spring for thee a crown of poppies wove, Or dost thou languish in th' Idalian grove, Whose altar kindles, fann'd by Lover's sighs? Ah! think, that while on AEtna's shores you stray, A fire, more fierce than AEtna's, fills my breast; Nor deck Sicilian nymphs with garlands gay, While Sappho's brows with cypress wreaths are drest; Let one kind word my weary woes repay, Or, in eternal slumbers bid them rest.