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| ARETHUSA arose | |
| From her couch of snows | |
| In the Acroceraunian mountains; | |
| From cloud and from crag | |
| With many a jag, | 5 |
| Shepherding her bright fountains. | |
| She leapt down the rocks, | |
| With her rainbow locks | |
| Streaming among the streams; | |
| Her steps paved with green | 10 |
| The downward ravine | |
| Which slopes to the western gleams; | |
| And gliding and springing, | |
| She went, ever singing, | |
| In murmurs as soft as sleep, | 15 |
| The earth seemed to love her, | |
| And heaven smiled above her, | |
| As she lingered towards the deep. | |
| |
| Then Alpheus bold, | |
| On his glacier cold, | 20 |
| With his trident the mountains strook; | |
| And opened a chasm | |
| In the rocks;—with the spasm | |
| All Erymanthus shook. | |
| And the black south-wind | 25 |
| It concealed behind | |
| The urns of the silent snow, | |
| And earthquake and thunder | |
| Did rend in sunder | |
| The bars of the springs below; | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| To its blue depth stirred, | |
| And divided at her prayer; | |
| And under the water | |
| The Earth’s white daughter | |
| Fled like a sunny beam; | 45 |
| Behind her descended | |
| Her billows, unblended | |
| With the brackish Dorian stream; | |
| Like a gloomy stain | |
| On the emerald main | 50 |
| Alpheus rushed behind,— | |
| As an eagle pursuing | |
| A dove to its ruin | |
| Down the streams of the cloudy wind. | |
| |
| Under the bowers | 55 |
| Where the ocean powers | |
| Sit on their pearléd thrones; | |
| Through the coral woods | |
| Of the weltering floods, | |
| Over heaps of unvalued stones; | 60 |
| Through the dim beams | |
| Which amid the streams | |
| Weave a network of colored light; | |
| And under the caves, | |
| Where the shadowy waves | 65 |
| 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 | 70 |
| 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, | 75 |
| Like friends once parted, | |
| Grown single-hearted, | |
| They ply their watery tasks. | |
| At sunrise they leap | |
| From their cradles steep | 80 |
| In the cave of the shelving hill; | |
| At noontide they flow | |
| Through the woods below | |
| And the meadows of asphodel; | |
| And at night they sleep | 85 |
| In the rocking deep | |
| Beneath the Ortygian shore;— | |
| Like spirits that lie | |
| In the azure sky | |
| When they love but live no more. | 90 |
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