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To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ;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 aërial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;

As summer clouds dissolve unburthened 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 tempestuous play.

THE WANING MOON.

AND like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil.
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass.

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..

"O save me! O 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 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 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 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,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.