Sappho, SAF oh, was a Greek lyric poet who lived about 600 B.C. Her only surviving verse consists of one probably complete poem and fragments of many others. These lines show intense but controlled emotion expressed in direct language. They demonstrate Sappho's keen powers of observation and her ability to capture in a few words insights into the world of both nature and human nature. Later poets, especially the Roman poets Catullus and Horace, imitated Sappho's four-line stanza, called the Sapphic. See Poetry.