The Brook's Song I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, I wind about, and in and out, And here and there a foamy flake With many a silvery water-break And draw them all along, and flow I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, I murmur under moon and stars I linger by my shingly bars; And out again I curve and flow For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever 1373 Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] ARETHUSA ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,— 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 Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. Arethusa "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! To its blue depth stirred, And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows, unblended 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 pearlèd 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 colored light; Where the shadowy waves 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 1375 Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, Like the spirits that lie In the azure sky. When they love but live no more. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE CATARACT OF LODORE "How does the water Anon, at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, Comes down at Lodore, So I told them in rhyme, The Cataract of Lodore That so I should sing; To them and the King. From its sources which well From its fountains In the mountains, Hurry-skurry. Here it comes sparkling, It reaches the place The cataract strong Its caverns and rocks among; Rising and leaping, 1377 |