XXXII
Poems:—
The following stanza is from Shelley's "Arethusa:"—
"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 toward the deep."
The river Alpheus does, in fact, disappear underground in part of its course, finding its way through subterranean channels until it again appears on the surface. It was said that the Sicilian fountain Arethusa was the same stream that, after passing under the sea, came up again in Sicily. Hence the story arose that a cup thrown into the Alpheus appeared again in Arethusa.
It is this fable of the underground course of the Alpheus that Coleridge alludes to in his poem of Kubla Khan:—
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea."