ARETHUSA.

I.

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.

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
Did rend in sunder

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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.

V.

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.

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I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

II.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets (Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth)

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Its mother's face with heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

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III.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than
any wakened eyes behold.

IV.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with

And starry river-buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

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V.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array

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Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!-oh! to whom?

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