Beckons the sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge with solemn truth life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? O Liberty! if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from

thee

If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn
harmony

XIX

Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ;
Then as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburdened of their

rain ;

As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,

As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempes

tuous play.

ΤΟ

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

ARETHUSA

I

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,

To. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Arethusa. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and dated by her, Pisa, 1820.

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep.

II

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.

III

"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
On the emerald main

Alpheus rushed behind,

As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

IV

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 network of colored light;
And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night; Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark, Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts

They passed to their Dorian home.

V

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;
At noontide 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.

SONG OF PROSERPINE

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,

Song of Proserpine, Published by Mrs. Shelley, 18391.