Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Amulet, 1832/The Greek Girl
THE GREEK GIRL
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THE GREEK GIRL.
BY L. E. L.
Oh! not as I could once have sung, not as I once could sing—
Alas! my heart has lost a pulse, my lute has lost a string!
There was a time this pictured scroll had bodied forth to me
A thousand fair and fairy thoughts that never more can be.
I once had read beneath the lash of that blue down-cast eye,
Whose depths are love's own azure world—its world of phantasy—
A thousand dreams, the fanciful of youth's enchanted hour,
When the heart, begirt with dreams, is like an early rose in flower,
With its colours and its odours, the beautiful and frail,
These fading, and those borne away by every passing gale:
How like the hopes and vanities that fill the human heart,
Thus opening, in the sweet spring-time—but only to depart!
I turn on life's imaginings an eye too calm and cold,
Such dreams for aye have lost on me their fascinating hold;
My few glad years in fairy-land are gone beyond control,
And graver thoughts, I cannot check, are rising in my soul.
For even as the crimson tints that perish as the day
In grey and solemn colouring to midnight fades away,
E'en so the mind, as years fleet by, doth take a deeper tone,
And, by my own sad heart, fair Greek, I learn to read thine own.
Thou art pausing, gentle maiden, in the task which thou hast made,
To wreathe the curls of thy bright hair into a sunny braid:
There is sadness on thy thoughtful lip, and shadow on thy brow,
Thou "delicate Ionian," what art thou dreaming now?
Fair gifts are flung around thee—the chain, the flower, the gem—
Dost thou think of him who gave the gifts, or only but of them?
But no; thou hast too pale a cheek, and far too tranquil eye
For a dream of love or vanity, to be that passing by.
Thou art thinking of thy childish days, and of thy childish home,
When thy step was as the mountain-roe, as fleet, as free to roam;
When the air around was musical with thine own happy song;
When summer leaves were overhead, and summer days were long.
Bride of a stately warrior, whose heart is as thy shrine,
Who pours the wealth of east and west to win a smile of thine;
Bride, too, of him thou lovest!—yet tears are in thine eyes,
For memory of thy native earth, and of thy native skies.
Ah! guard them well, those memories!—too soon the heart, around
The crust of luxury's selfishness, the harsh and hard is found;
Then keep the thoughts of earlier days—the guileless and the kind,
When the heart, with its sweet impulses, held empire o'er the mind.
These words, I know, are fanciful; yet who would not but trace
A history of gentle thoughts upon that lovely face!
For, if not all reality, at least, such well may seem,
And, even with our own actual life, what is it but a dream?