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 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.

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.

“ 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 danghter 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.

1

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 net-work 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 foani,

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 sun-rise they leap

From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill ;

At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel ;

. And at night they sleep

In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore :-

Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.

Pisa, 1820.

A LAMENT.

Or, world ! oh life ! oh time!
On whose last steps I climb

Trembling at that where I had stood before ; When will return the glory of your prime ?

No more- -0, never more !

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with gries, but with delight No more

e-0, never more !

THE QUESTION.

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,

Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fing
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Areturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lụsh eglantine,

Green cow-hind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine

Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day ;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray:
And flowers azure, black and streaked with gold,
Fairer than
any wakened eyes

behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag flowers, purple prankt with white,