The Reply Of The Fountain

Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)



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.

Font size:
Collection  PDF     
 

Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:47 min read
63

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB XCAC DEDE XFXF GHGH IJIJ XKLK MNMN OPOP QRQR XSAS TXXX UVUV XWXW TXTX BYVY Z1 Z1 XXXX 2 3 2 3 4 K4 K 5 L5 L
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 2,947
Words 547
Stanzas 21
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet. Born 14th August 1802 at 25 Hans Place, Chelsea, she lived through the most productive period of her life nearby, at No.22. A precocious child with a natural gift for poetry, she was driven by the financial needs of her family to become a professional writer and thus a target for malicious gossip (although her three children by William Jerdan were successfully hidden from the public). In 1838, she married George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, whence she travelled, only to die a few months later (15th October) of a fatal heart condition. Behind her post-Romantic style of sentimentality lie preoccupations with art, decay and loss that give her poetry its characteristic intensity and in this vein she attempted to reinterpret some of the great male texts from a woman’s perspective. Her originality rapidly led to her being one of the most read authors of her day and her influence, commencing with Tennyson in England and Poe in America, was long-lasting. However, Victorian attitudes led to her poetry being misrepresented and she became excluded from the canon of English literature, where she belongs. more…

All Letitia Elizabeth Landon poems | Letitia Elizabeth Landon Books

3 fans

Discuss the poem The Reply Of The Fountain with the community...

0 Comments

    Translation

    Find a translation for this poem in other languages:

    Select another language:

    • - Select -
    • 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
    • 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
    • Español (Spanish)
    • Esperanto (Esperanto)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
    • Português (Portuguese)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • العربية (Arabic)
    • Français (French)
    • Русский (Russian)
    • ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
    • 한국어 (Korean)
    • עברית (Hebrew)
    • Gaeilge (Irish)
    • Українська (Ukrainian)
    • اردو (Urdu)
    • Magyar (Hungarian)
    • मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
    • Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • தமிழ் (Tamil)
    • Türkçe (Turkish)
    • తెలుగు (Telugu)
    • ภาษาไทย (Thai)
    • Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
    • Čeština (Czech)
    • Polski (Polish)
    • Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Românește (Romanian)
    • Nederlands (Dutch)
    • Ελληνικά (Greek)
    • Latinum (Latin)
    • Svenska (Swedish)
    • Dansk (Danish)
    • Suomi (Finnish)
    • فارسی (Persian)
    • ייִדיש (Yiddish)
    • հայերեն (Armenian)
    • Norsk (Norwegian)
    • English (English)

    Citation

    Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:

    Style:MLAChicagoAPA

    "The Reply Of The Fountain" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/25724/the-reply-of-the-fountain>.

    Become a member!

    Join our community of poets and poetry lovers to share your work and offer feedback and encouragement to writers all over the world!

    March 2024

    Poetry Contest

    Join our monthly contest for an opportunity to win cash prizes and attain global acclaim for your talent.
    2
    days
    15
    hours
    39
    minutes

    Special Program

    Earn Rewards!

    Unlock exciting rewards such as a free mug and free contest pass by commenting on fellow members' poems today!

    Browse Poetry.com

    Quiz

    Are you a poetry master?

    »
    "Now I become myself. It's taken time, many years and places."
    A Rita Dove
    B Robert Frost
    C W.H. Auden
    D May Sarton