MONDAY TRAVELS: ARETHUSA by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Happy Monday friends! Welcome to another edition of Monday Travels

So today we are in ITALY and we will explore:


ARETHUSA

Let's meet Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. He spent majority of his adult life in Italy, where he led rather a scandalous life with multiple lovers and escorts. He was married to his second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia  in his sailing boat.

Poem:

I
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,---
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;---
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
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.

II
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 unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.
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.

IV
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 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.

Thoughts:

I heard this poem on Saturday night, while watching a movie called Roman Holiday. 
I have to admit, I was always rather interested with the Shelley's however, I only ever read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, but never really picked up anything written by her husband and I have to say, he did know how to write. This poem is simply beautiful!

I mean yes, he did live a rather....open life, if I may call it like that, but just look at these lines, these words, this prosaic poem. Wow I am stunned and just impressed so much!

I will definitely be reading more of his works! Did you guys read anything by Percy Shelley? Let me know!

See you Next Monday!