ARETHUSA.

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,—

From cloud and from crag

With many a jag Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks

With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams ;

Her steps paved with green

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

Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below :

The beard and the hair

Of the river God were Seen through the torrent's sweep,

As he followed the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight 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.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones.

Through the coral woods

Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones;

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams Weave a net-work of coloured light;

And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night :

Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home.

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;

At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel ;

And at night they sleep

In the rocking deep 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,

Thou from whose immortal bosom,
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,

Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these

young

flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,

Fairest children of the hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO.

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,

Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries From the broad moonlight of the sky, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,

Waken me when their Mother, the grey

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 ; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may

shine Are portions of one power, which is mine.

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I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down

I
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle ?

I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine,
All light of art or nature ;—to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.