SICILIAN Arethusa! thou, whose arms Of azure round the Thymbrian meadows wind, Still are thy margins lined With the same flowers Proserpina was weaving In Enna's field, beside Pergusa's lake, When swarthy Dis, upheaving, Saw her, and, stung to madness by her charms, Down snatched her, shrieking, to his Stygian couch. Thy waves, Sicilian Arethusa, flow In cadence to the shepherd's flageolet As tunefully as when they wont to crouch Beneath the banks to catch the pipings low Of old Theocritus, and hear him trill Bucolic songs, and Amoebaean lays. And still, Sicilian Arethusa, still, Though Etna dry thee up, or frosts enchain, Thy music shall be heard, for poets high Have dipped their wreaths in thee, and by their praise Made thee immortal as themselves. Thy flowers, Transplanted, an eternal bloom retain, Rooted in words that cannot fade or die. Thy liquid gush and gurgling melody Have left undying echoes in the bowers Of tuneful poesy. Thy very name, Sicilian Arethusa, had been drowned In deep oblivion, but that the buoyant breath Of bards uplifted it, and bade it swim Adown the eternal lapse, assured of fame, Till all things shall be swallowed up in death. Where, Immortality! where canst thou found Thy throne unperishing, but in the hymn Of the true bard, whose breath encrusts his theme Like to a petrifaction, which the stream Of time will only make more durable? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...REMEMBERED MUSIC; A FRAGMENT by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE WAY OF SACRIFICE by MATTHEW ARNOLD AT SUNSET by MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN REINCARNATION by ALICE CHURCHILL CHAPHE ESTREINES; TO CALISTA by CHARLES COTTON |