The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

ARETHUSA.

• • 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
  • Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
  • As he followed the light
  • Of the fleet nymph’s flight
  • To the brink of the Dorian deep.
• • “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.
  • 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 net-work of coloured light;
  • And under the caves,
  • Where the shadowy waves
  • Are as green as the forest’s night:—
  • Outspeeding the shark,
  • And the sword-fish 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 morning basks,
  • Like friends once parted
  • Grown single-hearted,
  • They ply their watery tasks.
  • At sun-rise they leap
  • From their cradles steep
  • In the cave of the shelving hill;
  • At noon-tide 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.

Pisa, 1820.