ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows Shepherding her bright fountains. With her rainbow locks The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams : And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks ;-with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder The bars of the springs below: The beard and the hair Of the river God were Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!' The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream: Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. VOL. III. 4 Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones. Which amid the streams Weave a network of coloured light; Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts : Of the mountain clifts And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel; And at night they sleep Beneath the Ortygian shore ; Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Fairest children of the hours, HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; All men who do or even imagine ill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, Until diminished by the reign of night. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; |