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."[1]
43
- ↑ the quotes are missing here in the source used, but they should be present
