[I seek and desire]
translated from the ancient Greek by Bliss Carman
I seek and desire,
Even as the wind
That travels the plain
And stirs in the bloom
Of the apple-tree.
I wander through life,
With the searching mind
That is never at rest,
Till I reach the shade
Of my lover’s door.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 14, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“[I seek and desire]” was published in Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (Chatto and Windus, 1907), translated by Bliss Carman. About the translations, Kelly McGuire, an assistant professor of English at Trent University, writes in her essay “‘Fashioned for desire’: Re-Constructing the Body in Bliss Carman’s Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics,” published in Canadian Poetry, Vol. 49, “As Sappho’s desire gradually attenuates and contours itself around notions of absence, it must inevitably redirect itself into channels of a more philosophical or even spiritual vein, and at last, albeit reluctantly, attain sublimation to the mode of love most endorsed by Plato in the Symposium. The onset of maturity and resignation might also influence what many interpret as the text’s ultimate thrust towards spiritual love, a reading supported by Carman’s own meditations on love.”
Sappho
