e' by Sappho

This brief two-line piece by Sappho is a wedding blessing directed at a bridegroom, conveying that the marriage he longed for has become a reality and that the bride he desired is now his. It represents one of the rare remaining fragments of Sappho's epithalamia, the songs she wrote for wedding ceremonies on Lesbos. Despite its brevity, it beautifully expresses the joy and satisfaction of a long-awaited wish finally fulfilled.

Joyful and ceremonial. The tone is warm and public — this is a blessing shared at a celebration, not a private moment of reflection. There’s no uncertainty or gloom; the atmosphere is filled with pure, unfiltered happiness at a dream come true.

Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos around 630–570 BCE and is one of the earliest lyric poets whose work has survived. In antiquity, she was well-known for two types of songs: personal love lyrics and epithalamia, which are wedding songs performed during ceremonies. This fragment is from the latter category. Greek wedding rituals included processions, feasts, and choral singing, with poets like Sappho composing and performing songs at various stages. The tradition of epithalamium involved praising the bride and groom, invoking the gods, and blessing their union. Only fragments of Sappho's nine books of poetry remain, mostly in the form of a line or two cited by later grammarians as examples of her dialect or meter. Even though this fragment is short, it captures the warmth and directness that made Sappho's wedding songs cherished for centuries.