ARETHUSA.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated by her
‘Pisa, 1820.’ There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at
the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903,
page 24.]
1.
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.
2.
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 unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below. _30
And 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.
3.
‘Oh, save me! Oh, 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.
4.
Under the bowers _55
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled 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 coloured 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’s foam,
And up through the rifts _70
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.
5.
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
NOTES:
_6 unsealed B.; concealed 1824.
_31 And the B.; The 1824.
_69 Ocean’s B.; ocean 1824.
***