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 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. 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. The beard and the hair Of the River-god were Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep. Arethusa "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! To its blue depth stirred, 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. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd 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; Where the shadowy waves 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, 1375 Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, Like the spirits that lie In the azure sky. When they love but live no more. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE CATARACT OF LODORE "How does the water Anon, at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, Comes down at Lodore, For their recreation The Cataract of Lodore That so I should sing; To them and the King. From its sources which well From its fountains In the mountains, Hurry-skurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its steep descent. The cataract strong Its caverns and rocks among; Rising and leaping, 1377 Swelling and sweeping, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, A sight to delight in; Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound. Collecting, projecting, Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And glittering and frittering, |