XIX. Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light On the heavy sounding plain, When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain; As a far taper fades with fading night; Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away THE WANING MOON. AND like a dying lady, lean and pale, ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains; Shepherding her bright fountains. 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. 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 Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. "O save me! O 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: 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 pearled thrones; Over heaps of unvalued stones; 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 :— And the sword-fish 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, 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; Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; Beneath the Ortygian shore ;- 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, If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Fairest children of the hours, |