The Brook's Song I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, 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 For men may come and men may go, 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 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 Of the fleet nymph's flight 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 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 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 In Enna's mountains, 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 To tell him in rhyme. 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, They had seen it before. For their recreation The Cataract of Lodore That so I should sing; To them and the King. From its sources which well In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; It runs and it creeps Hurry-skurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its steep descent. The cataract strong Its caverns and rocks among; Rising and leaping, 1377 |