Sing, Lyre!

Sappho fragment 118
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 
Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre;
come, let my words
accompany your voice.
 

"Quoted by Hermogenes and Eustathius. Sappho is apparently addressing her lyre. The legend is that Hermes is supposed to have made the first lyre by stretching the strings across the cavity of a tortoise's shell."―Edwin Marion Cox