Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/140

136 Mortals only hear their moan,

Have they not a softer tone?

Maidens of the coral grove!

Hear what I implore of you:

If ye know of endless love,

Tell your earthly sister true;

Mortals tell her love is vain—

Answer from the sighing main!

Her. So young, and misanthropic! say, my child,

Who taught you how to doubt earth's love and trust?

Azlea. I scarce can tell, unless it were the one

Who only loves me, and alone I love—

My father! Yet he never bade me doubt,

Or turn from love; but when I look on him,

Shrinking away from the world's noisy praise,

And breathing mournful music to himself,

It seems as if he thought 'twere mockery—

And having learned to understand each tone,

His plaintive melodies are more eloquent

To me, of thought and feeling, than are words.

If this can be called teaching, 'twas this taught

Even my earliest childhood to hoard up

Its fullness of affection from the world,

And turned my heart to nature's changeless love.

Her. Dost thou love nature wholly; her wild scenes

Of grand and awful beauty dost thou love,

Even as the starlight or the sunset hour?

Azlea. Yes, almost more, but with a stranger feeling.

I love the lightning's vivid flash—

The deep-toned thunder's angry crash;

I love the ocean's stormy roar,

That beats its surge against the shore;