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I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

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;

To

And gliding and springing,

She went, ever singing,

Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Arethusa. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and dated by her, Pisa, 1820.

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

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.

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

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 network of colored light;

And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night;
Outspeeding the shark,

And the swordfish 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,

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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 noontide 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,

Song of Proserpine, Published by Mrs. Shelley, 18391.

Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO

I

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

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.

II

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.

III

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.

Hymn of Apollo. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

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