Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee)— If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears?"—The solemn harmony XIX. Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn. Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain; Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away 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: 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. II. 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. Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. III. "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. IV. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Pisa. Sit on their pearled thrones; Of the weltering floods; 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, They passed to their Dorian home. V. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. From their cradles steep And the meadows of asphodel; Beneath the Ortygian shore,— Like spirits that lie In the azure sky, When they love but live no more. HYMN OF APOLLO. I. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, From the broad moonlight of the sky, II. Then I arise, and, climbing heaven's blue dome, 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. III. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 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, IV. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; V. I stand at noon upon the peak of heaven; For grief that I depart they weep and frown. VI. I am the eye with which the universe All prophecy, all medicine, are mine, HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The cicale above in the lime, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Liquid Peneus was flowing, The light of the dying day, Speeded by my sweet pipings. The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, —as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings. I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal earth, |