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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

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 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 past 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 noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep

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Curtained with star-inwoven tapes- I stand at noon upon the peak of

tries,

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,

waves,

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I walk over the mountains and the I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;

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Were silent with love, as you now, Its mother's face with heaven's collected Apollo,

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tears,

With envy of my sweet pipings. When the low wind, its playmate's voice,

III

of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal Earth, And of Heaven-and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth,

And then I changed my pipings,Singing how down the vale of Menalus

I pursued a maiden and clasp'd a reed: Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! It breaks in our bosom and then we

bleed:

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And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep See, the bounds of the air are shaken

green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober

sheen.

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
Kept these imprisoned children of the
Hours

Night is coming!

The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the
plain-

Night is coming!

Second Spirit

I see the light, and I hear the sound; I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,

Within my hand, and then, elate With the calm within and the light

and gay,

I hastened to the spot whence I had

come,

That I might there present it!--oh! to whom?

THE TWO SPIRITS: AN

ALLEGORY

First Spirit

O THOU, who plumed with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire-
Night is coming!

Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there-
Night is coming!

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I STOOD within the city disinterred;2

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls

The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,

Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine

Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II a

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain

odour keen;

And where the Baian ocean Welters with airlike motion,

Of spirits passing through the streets; Within, above, around its bowers of

and heard

The Mountain's slumberous voice at

intervals

Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood;

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke

I felt, but heard not:-through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure:

Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre

Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure

Were to spare Death, had never made

erasure;

But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there

1 The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baia with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some

starry green,

Moving the sea-flowers in those purple

caves

Even as the ever stormless atmosphere

Floats o'er the Elysian realm, It bore me like an Angel, o'er the

waves

Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of
dewy air

No storm can overwhelm;
I sailed, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.3 Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare Its depths over Elysium, where the prow

Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime
There streamed a sunlight vapour,
like the standard

Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round,
there wandered

of the majestic feelings permanently connected Over the oracular woods and divine sea with the scene of this animating event.

2 Pompeii.

3 Homer and Virgil.

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