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| SICILIAN Arethusa! thou, whose arms | |
| Of azure round the Thymbrian meadows wind, | |
| Still are thy margins lined | |
| With the same flowers Proserpina was weaving | |
| In Enna’s field, beside Pergusa’s lake, | 5 |
| When swarthy Dis, upheaving, | |
| Saw her, and, stung to madness by her charms, | |
| Down snatched her, shrieking, to his Stygian couch. | |
| Thy waves, Sicilian Arethusa, flow | |
| In cadence to the shepherd’s flageolet | 10 |
| As tunefully as when they wont to crouch | |
| Beneath the banks to catch the pipings low | |
| Of old Theocritus, and hear him trill | |
| Bucolic songs, and Amoebæan lays. | |
| And still, Sicilian Arethusa, still, | 15 |
| Though Ætna dry thee up, or frosts enchain, | |
| Thy music shall be heard, for poets high | |
| Have dipped their wreaths in thee, and by their praise | |
| Made thee immortal as themselves. Thy flowers, | |
| Transplanted, an eternal bloom retain, | 20 |
| Rooted in words that cannot fade or die. | |
| Thy liquid gush and guggling melody | |
| Have left undoing echoes in the bowers | |
| Of tuneful poesy. Thy very name, | |
| Sicilian Arethusa, had been drowned | 25 |
| In deep oblivion, but that the buoyant breath | |
| Of bards uplifted it, and bade it swim | |
| Adown the eternal lapse, assured of fame, | |
| Till all things shall be swallowed up in death. | |
| Where, Immortality, where canst thou found | 30 |
| Thy throne unperishing, but in the hymn | |
| Of the true bard, whose breath encrusts his theme | |
| Like to a petrifaction, which the stream | |
| Of time will only make more durable? | |
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