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.

Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO

I

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

II

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the

caves

Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

III

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the

day;

All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night.

Hymn of Apollo. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

IV

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers With their ethereal colors; the moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,

Then with unwilling steps I wander down Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown. What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle?

VI

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine,
All light of Art or Nature;-to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN

I

FROM the forests and highlands

We

e come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

vi. 6 their its, Rossetti.

Hymn of Pan. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

II

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.

III

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal Earth,
And of Heaven and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth; -
And then I changed my pipings,
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed. Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.