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,
In murmurs as soft as sleep.

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

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

Weave a network of coloured

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.

And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morn

ing 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.

SHELLEY.