sabrina fair
My all-time favorite movie is the old version of Sabrina by Billy Wilder with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. However, in the newer version with Harrison Ford, there is a scene where Sabrina explains where she got her name from. Now, this story was adapted from a play originally, so I partially think that perhaps the play version had this scene or something like it. Yet, I digress, her name was taken from a piece of poetry about a water sprite who saves a young virgin from a fate worse than death. You may not be interested at all, but I’m going to enclose said poem below, as a piece of prose never did hurt anyone.
Sabrina Fair
By, John Milton
Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv’st unseen
Within thy airy shell
By slow Meander’s margent green,
And in the violet-imbroider’d vale
Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are?
O if thou have
Hid them in some flow’ry cave,
Tell me but where
Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere,
So mayst thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heav’ns harmonies.
Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.
Listen and appear to us
In name of great Oceanus,
By the earth-shaking Neptune’s mace,
And Tethys’ grave majestic pace;
By hoary Nereus’ wrinkled look,
And the Carpathian wizard’s hook;
By scaly Triton’s winding shell,
And old soothsaying Glaucus’ spell;
By Leucothea’s lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands;
By Thetis’ tinsel-slipper’d feet,
And the songs of Sirens sweet;
By dead Parthenope’s dear tomb,
And fair Ligea’s golden comb,
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
By all the nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance,
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-pav’n bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answer’d have.
Listen and save.
Sabrina rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings
By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue, and em’rald green
That in the channel strays,
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O’er the cowslip’s velvet head,
That bends not as I tread;
Gentle swain at thy request
I am here.
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