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, The bars of the springs below Seen through the torrent's sweep, 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, And up through the rifts 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 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, I walk over the mountains and the I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; Were silent with love, as you now, Its mother's face with heaven's collected Apollo, 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: 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 Were mingled or opposed, the like array Night is coming! The red swift clouds of the hurricane 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 Bright are the regions of the air, 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 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 No storm can overwhelm; 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; Of some ethereal host; 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. |