The Scian and the Teian Muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse; Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds, which echo farther west Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest." The mountains look on Marathon- I dreamed that Greece might still be free; A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below, And men in nations-all were his! PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1822. Arethusa. RETHUSA 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 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: Of the fleet nymph's flight ARETHUSA. :. "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 Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Sit on their pearlèd thrones ; 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 passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains Down one vale where the morning basks, They ply their watery tasks. From their cradles steep Like spirits that lie In the azure sky, When they love but live no more. AREWELL, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Oh! fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing, But long upon Araby's green sunny highlands, Shall maids and their lovers remember the doom Of her who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands, With nought but the sea-star to light up her tomb. And still when the merry date season is burning, And calls to the palm-grove the young and the old, |