SILENCE, all! ye winged choir; On the day of rest divine, All the week they drudge away, Utter not your cheerful sounds, Linnet, hist! and blackbird, hush! Throstle, be a songless thrush; Nightingale and lark, be mute; Never sing to such a brute. Robin, at the twilight dim, Soothe not, birds, his lonesome hours, ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,- Shepherding her bright fountains. Her steps paved with green 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 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 Alpheus rushed behind,- A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean powers And under the caves, Are as green as the forest's night- Under the ocean foam; And up through the rifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains Down one vale where the morning basks, Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap In the cave of the shelving hill; At noon-tide they flow Like spirits that lie When they love but live no more. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. THE FOUNTAIN. INTO the sunshine, Full of light, Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Into the starlight, Ever in motion, Glad of all weathers, Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every momentEver the same; Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Glorious fountain! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. |