The Poetical Works of Horace Smith. 2vols (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SICILIAN ARETHUSA. 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 snatch'd 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 Amoebeean lays. And still, Sicilian Arethusa, still, Though Etna dry thee up, or frosts enchain, Thy music shall be heard, for poets high Have dipp'd 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 guggling melody Have left undying echoes in the bowers Of tuneful poesy. Thy very name, Sicilian Arethusa, had been drown'd In deep oblivion, but that the buoyant breath Of bards uplifted it, and bade it swim Adown th' eternal lapse, assured of fame, Till all things shall be swallow'd 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 ? THE SHRIEK OF PROMETHEUS. ' Suggested by a passage in the second Book of Apollonius Rhodius. Fresh was the breeze, and the rowers plied Their oars with simultaneous motion, When the Argo sail'd in her stately pride By the laurel'd shores of the Pontie Ocean. The island of Mars with its pal...