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The Reply Of The Fountain

OW deep within each human heart,

A thousand treasured feelings lie;

Things precious, delicate, apart,

Too sensitive for human eye.

Our purest feelings, and our best,

Yet shrinking from the common view;

Rarely except in song exprest,

And yet how tender, and how true!

They wake, and know their power, when

Flings on the west its transient glow;

Yet long dark shadows dimly weaveA gloom round some green path below.

Who dreams not then—the young dream on—Life traced at hope's delicious will;

And those whose youth of heart is gone,

Perhaps have visions dearer still.

They rise, too, when expected least,

When gay yourself, amid the gay,

The heart from revelry hath

To muse o'er hours long past away.

And who can think upon the

And not weep o'er it as a grave?

How many leaves life's wreath has cast!

What lights have sunk beneath the wave!

But most these deep emotions

When, drooping o'er our thoughts alone,

Our former dearest

Come back, and claim us for their own.

Such mood is on the maiden's

Who bends o'er yon clear fount her brow;

Long years, that leave their trace behind,

Long years, are present with her now.

Yet, once before she asked a

From that wild fountain's plaintive song;

And silvery, with the soft moonshine,

Those singing waters past along.

It was an hour of beauty,

For the young heart's impassioned mood,

For love of its sweet self afraid,

For hope that colours solitude."Alas," the maiden sighed, "since firstI said,

Oh fountain, read my doom;

What vainest fancies have I nurst,

Of which I am myself the tomb!"The love was checked—the hope was vain,

I deemed that I could feel no more;

Why, false one, did we meet again,

To show thine influence was not o'er?"I thought that I could never

Again, as I had wept for thee,

That love was buried cold and deep,

That pride and scorn kept watch by me."My early hopes, my early

Were now almost forgotten things,

And other cares, and other

Had brought what all experience brings—"Indifference, weariness, disdain,

That taught and ready smile which growsA habit soon—as streams

The shape and light in which they froze."Again I met that faithless eye,

Again I heard that charmed tongue;

I felt they were my destiny,

I knew again the spell they flung."Ah! years have fled, since last his

Was breathed amid the twilight dim;

It was to dream of him I came,

And now again I dream of him."But changed and cold, my soul has

Too deeply wrung, too long unmoved,

Too hardened in life's troubled

To love as I could once have loved."Sweet fountain, once I asked thy

To whisper hope's enchanted spell;

Now I but ask thy haunted

To teach me how to say farewell."She leaned her head upon her hand,

She gazed upon that fountain

Which wandered by its wild-flower

With a low, mournful, ceaseless moan.

It soothed her with a sweet

Of pity, murmured on the breeze;

Ah deep the grief, which seeks to

Itself with fantasies like these.

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Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L.
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