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the reply of the fountain - letitia elizabeth landon - richard mitchley lyrics

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how 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 eve
flings on the west its transient glow;
yet long dark shadows dimly weave
a 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 ceased
to muse o’er hours long past away

and who can think upon the past
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 rise
when, drooping o’er our thoughts alone
our former dearest sympathies
come back, and claim us for their own

such mood is on the maiden’s mind
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 sign
from that wild fountain’s plaintive song;
and silvery, with the soft moonshine
those singing waters past along

it was an hour of beauty, made
for the young heart’s impassioned mood
for love of its sweet self afraid
for hope that colours solitude

‘alas,’ the maiden sighed, ‘since first
i 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 weep
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 tears
were now almost forgotten things
and other cares, and other years
had brought what all experience brings—

‘indifference, weariness, disdain
that taught and ready smile which grows
a habit soon—as streams retain
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 name
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 been
too deeply wrung, too long unmoved
too hardened in life’s troubled scene
to love as i could once have loved
‘sweet fountain, once i asked thy waves
to whisper hope’s enchanted spell;
now i but ask thy haunted caves
to teach me how to say farewell.’

she leaned her head upon her hand
she gazed upon that fountain lone
which wandered by its wild*flower strand
with a low, mournful, ceaseless moan

it soothed her with a sweet deceit
of pity, murmured on the breeze;
ah deep the grief, which seeks to cheat
itself with fantasies like these

- richard mitchley lyrics

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