#anacreon

my lyre sings only of love

The painting depicts Sappho, a famous Greek lyric poet, gifting Anacreon, another celebrated Greek poet, a feather from Cupid's wing.

I feel like Sappho is probably going to come out on top here but I'm curious what everyone's Poetry Hot Takes are

Thracian filly, why indeed are you looking at me through the corner of your eye while you pitilessly flee? Do you fancy I know not one skill? Look, know this: I would fit the bit into your mouth beautifully, and holding the reins I would turn you around the bends of the track. But now you're grazing on the meadows. Nimble and prancing you play, for you don’t have a skilful rider to mount you.

But she, because she is from fair-citied Lesbos, she finds fault with my hair because it is white and she gapes after another woman.

Plate of porcelain painted in colours and gilded; with a picture of a cupid inside a wine glass, after Anacreon. Probably painted by Thomas Baxter, Barr, Flight & Barr, Worcester, ca. 1820. From an engraving by J. Pastorini entitled 'The Cup of Delight' (1807).

Marble head of a Greek warrior (the so-called "Miltiades"). Roman copy (1st half of 1st cent. CE) after an original of ca. 490 BCE. Now in the Altes Museum, Berlin. Photo credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP/Wikimedia Commons.