We know little of her, but she's one of the most famous and accomplished poets of antiquity. Most of the nine volumes of her poetry are fragments. She was born around 630 BCE on the Greek island of Lesbos, near the coast of modern Türkiye.
This is the rare complete poem of Sappho. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (born around 60 BCE) quotes the poem in a work he wrote on composition. We also have bits of the poem on a worn, worm-eaten papyrus from the 100s CE. Line 19 in the Greek has crosses (cruces) because scholars think Dionysius's text there is wrong. My rendering of the Greek at 19 is my own.
Sappho Poem 1
Flower-crowned deathless Aphrodite, Zeus's child, weaver of deceits, I pray: don't crush my heart with pain, my queen.
Just come here now like you've done before when you heard me and left your father's house of gold and came,
riding in your sparrow-drawn chariot, their wings thick over the dark earth from heaven down to me
in an instant they came and you, happy, smiled your god smile and asked why I was suffering again and why was I calling you again
and what was it my wild heart wanted: "Who do I again convince to return to your arms? Who's done you wrong, Sappho?
If she's avoiding you, soon she won't. If she's not taking your gifts, she'll give them. If she doesn't love you, soon she will, whether she wants to or not."
Just come here now. Get rid of this pain. Everything my heart wants, give me. Be my ally in love.