Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/148

144 Which will require good 'tendance; and for this

My father and myself have pledged ourselves,

In kindness to the suffering.

Her. Methought I heard sweet music, when I first

Entered your vine-wreathed cottage; did I so?

Azlea. You may have heard a simple melody

With which I sung the invalid to rest.

Her. You did then sing the stranger to his rest,

And your fair hands have bathed his aching brow,

And your sweet voice has whispered tenderness,

And you have ministered to his every want

With most unsparing kindness. Azlea,

This stranger here is young; is of the world;

'Tis true he may be good and virtuous,

But there are few who are; nay, blush not, child,

With such a pained look; I did not mean

What thou hast done is wrong, in being kind—

But in the world of which this stranger is,

Such innocence as thine meets sneering taunts—

Being deemed by its misjudging sinfulness,

Other than what it is. Art weeping, sweet?

Nay, weep not, I was wrong; and now I think,

While gazing on thee and thy mournful face,

Not any but the vilest could withstand

The power of thy guileless purity.

I would not take thy unsuspecting truth,

And give thee all earth's wisdom, and its wealth,

For thou wouldst be the loser.

Azlea. Father, if in aught I have transgressed,

Even the world's stern code of modest action,

I should be bitterly grieved; and thou art right

To wain me of my folly. Azlea

Knows little of the world, and would not learn

More than she knows already, if to learn