Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the [

1

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled-but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through.

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 bebind,

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 helow

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.

THE QUESTION.

1 DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag flowers, purple prankt with white,

And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, and then, elate and gay,
I hsstened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!-Oh! to whom?

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR.

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me-who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!