The story
According to the myth, the river god Alpheius fell in love with Arethusa after she bathed in his waters. Pursued by Alpheius, Arethusa prayed to Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, to save her. Artemis answered Arethusa by spiriting her off to the island of Ortygia and transforming her into a spring. Undeterred by Artemis's interference, Alpheius flowed under the sea to Ortygia, where he united with Arethusa by mingling his waters with hers in the spring.
Painting by Arthur Bowen Davies
Poem by Percy Shelley
Arethusa arose,
From her couch of snows,
In the Acroeraunian mountains.
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Sheparding 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.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook.
And opened a chasm,
In the rocks with a spasm,
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind,
It concealed behind,
The urns of the silent snow.
And Earthquake and thunder,
Did rend in sunder,
The bars of the spring below.
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.
"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.
Like an eagle pursueing,
A dove to its ruin,
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
Under the bowers,
Where the ocean powers,
Sit on their pearled 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 foam.
And up through the rifts,
Of the mountain clifts,
They passed to their Dorian home.
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 noon-tide 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 they lie,
In the azure sky,
When they love but live no more.
