Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse;
or rather they all knew the fact; but the how, or manner of it, was a puzzle, till Keats related the adventure as it was witnessed by Endymion in a grotto under the sea. The lover of the Moon suddenly heard strange distant echoes, which seemed—
The ghosts, the dying swells
Of noises far away—hist!—Hereupon
He kept an anxious ear. The humming tone
Came louder; and behold! there, as he lay,
On either side out-gush’d, with misty spray,
A copious spring; and both together dash’d
Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash’d
Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot,
Leaving a trickling dew.
(These are the two living streams, one in pursuit of the other.)
At last they shot
Down from the ceiling’s height, pouring a noise
As of some breathless racers, whose hopes poise
Upon the last few steps, and with spent force
Along the ground they took a winding course.
Endymion follow’d, for it seem’d that one
Ever pursued, the other strove to shun.
After a while, he hears a whispering dialogue, in which the female voice shows plainly enough, that the speaker would stay if she might; but suddenly the severe face of Diana is before her, and in an instant
Fell
Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell;
and Endymion puts up a prayer for their escape.
When the writer of the present book was in Italy, he saw on a mantelpiece a card inscribed, Le Marquis de Retuse. This was the Frenchified denomination of a Sicilian nobleman, who, strangely combining Greek and Gothic in his title, was no less a personage than the Marquis of Arethusa! He was proprietor of the spot where the fountain exists under its old name, though, according to travellers, deplorably altered; for it has become, says one of them, the public “washtub!” It is the Syracusan laundry. Divers, he informs us, are the jokes cracked on the “nymphs” that now attend it. Some critics are of opinion, that such were the “only nymphs” that ever existed; and they are very merry over the fallen condition of the once exquisite Arethusa. Poor devils! taking pains to vulgarize their perceptions, and diminish the amount of grace and joy. As if Arethusa, like themselves, were at the mercy of a homely association; or all that had been written about her was no better than their own account with the laundress! They flatter themselves. They leave her just where she was—everywhere, and immortal. It may not be very pleasant to look for a poetic fountain, and find a laundry; but the imagination is a poor one indeed, which is to be overwhelmed by it. The nymphs of minds like these could never have been very different from laundresses, if the truth were known; or, at the utmost, of little higher stock than such as laundresses and milliners are the making of.
There are two things, we confess, about the Sirens, that perplex us. In the first place, we never found anything particularly attractive in the songs attributed to them, not even by Homer; and secondly, we are too much in the secret of their deformity. We know that they were ghastly monsters, bird-harpies with women’s heads, and surrounded with human bones; and the consequence is, we can never find them in the least degree enticing. It is to no purpose that they combine stringed with wind instruments, and a voice crowning all. One of them may call herself Fair-Goddess (Leucothea), and another Fine-voice (Ligeia), and the third Maiden-face (Parthenope). We know all about them, and are not to be taken in. It would require a dream as horrible as Coleridge’s Pains of Sleep to bring our antipathy into any communication with them—to make us walk in our sleep towards their quarter:—