And 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.

III

'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 behind,—
As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

IV

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 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's foam,

And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts

They passed to their Dorian home.

V

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 sunrise they leap

From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

SONG OF PROSERPINE

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA

I

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine

On thine own child, Proserpine.

II

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue,

Fairest children of the Hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

HYMN OF PAN

I

FROM the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

II

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

And of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,—
And then I changed my pipings,
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
Percy Bysshe Shelley