From David M. Robinson’s Sappho and Her Influence,

Very seldom does [Sappho] evoke the vision of a great and pure poetess with marvelous expressions of beauty, grace, and power at her command, who not only haunts the dawn of Grecian Lyric poetry but lives in scattered and broken lights that glint from vases and papyri and from the pages of cold grammarians and warm admirers . … I for one have always agreed with all Grecian tradition in thinking Sappho to be beyond all question and comparison the very greatest poet that ever lived. Aeschylus is the greatest poet who ever was also a prophet; Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist who was ever also a poet, but Sappho is nothing less-as she is certainly nothing more-than the greatest poet who ever was at all. … Sappho s poetry deals with the eternal experiences of the human heart and carries with it those touches which make the whole world kin.