Like that fair region, whither, long unspied
Of him. her wayward mood did long offend,
Whilom in vain, through strange and secret sluice,
Passed under sea the Virgin Arethuse.
Stanza xix. lines 5, 6, 7, 8.
“Arethusa (as may be read in Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary) was a nymph of Elis, daughter of Oceanus, and one of Diana’s attendants. As she returned one day from hunting, she sat near the Alpheus, and bathed in the stream. The god of the river was enamoured of her, and pursued her, when Arethusa, ready to sink under fatigue, prayed to Diana, who changed her into a fountain. Alpheus immediately mingled his streams with hers, and Diana opened a secret passage under the earth and under the sea, where the waters of Arethusa disappeared, rising in the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse, in Sicily. The river Alpheus, too, followed her under the sea, and rose also in Ortygia; so that, as mythologists relate, whatever is thrown into the Alpheus in Elis, rises again, after some time, in the fountain of Arethusa near Syracuse.”
As in a stick to feed the chimney rent,
- Where scanty pith ill fills the narrow sheath,
- The vapour, in its little channel pent,
- Struggles, tormented by the fire beneath;
- And, till its prisoned fury find a vent,
- Is heard to hiss and bubble, sing and seethe:
- So the offended myrtle inly pined,
- Groaned, murmured, and at last unclosed its rind:
Stanza xxvii.
And hence a clear, intelligible speech
- Thus issued.
Stanza xxviii. lines 1 and 2.
For the beginning of the first stanza cited, the author is again indebted to Dante. I cannot here agree with one of his commentators in the opinion that he has improved the image of his
