Hast year by year renew'd thy flowers,

And perfumed the surrounding bowers,

And poured down grateful fruit by showers,

And proffer'd shade in summer hours

To man and creature.

Thou green and venerable tree!

Whate'er the future doom may be,

By fortune given,

Remember that a rhymester brought

From foreign shores thine umbrage sought,

Recall'd the blessings thou hadst wrought,

And, as he thank'd thee, raised his thought To heaven!

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 Amoebæan 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 Pontic Ocean.

The island of Mars with its palmy coves,

The sacred Mount, and Aretia's strands,
And Philyra's Isle with its linden groves,
And Ophir's flood with its shelly sands,—

Swiftly they passed-till, stretching far,

On their right Bechiria's coast appears,
Where painted Sapirians, fierce in war,

Bristle the beach with bows and spears.

At distance they saw the sun-beams quiver

Where the long-sought towers of Colchis stood, And mark'd the foam of the Phasis river,

As it flung from its rocky mouth the flood.

The Argonauts gaze with hungry eyes

On the land enrich'd by the Golden Fleece,Already in fancy they grasp the prize,

And hear the shouts of applauding Greece.

Jason looked out with a proud delight,

Castor and Pollux stood hand in hand,

Showing each other the welcome sight;

While fierce Meleager unsheath'd his brand.

Laocoon bade the rowers check

Their oars, as the sun to the water slanted, For Orpheus sate with his harp on the deck,

And sweetly the hymn of evening chanted,