Page:Selections from the American poets (IA selectamerpoet00bryarich).pdf/109

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WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.
105
Into familiar sounds, that conjured upMy boyhood's earliest dreams of isles, that lieIn farthest depths of ocean; girt with allOf natural wealth and splendour—jewell'd isles—Boundless in unimaginable spoils,That earth is stranger to. Isa. Thou dreamest still:Thy boyhood's legends carry thee away,Till thou forgett'st the mighty difference'Twixt those two worlds—the one, where nature toils,The other she but dreams of. Leon. I dream not:I heard it visibly to the sense, and hark!It comes again: dost thou not hear it now!List now, dear Isabel. Isa. I hear naught. Leon. Surely I marked it then; I could not dream:'Twas like the winds among a bed of reeds,And spoke a deep, heart-melancholy sound,That made me sigh when I heard it. Isa. No more!Thou art too led away by idle thoughts,Dear Leon; and, I fear me, thou dost takeToo much the colour of the passing cloud,Filling thy heart with shadowings, that misleadThy roving thoughts, already too much proneTo empty speculation. Leon. I said not wrong:My spirit trick'd me not my sense was true.I hear it now again. Far, far off, fine—So delicate, as if some spirit formWere for the first time murmuring into life,And this its first complaining. Hearken now—Nay, Isabel! thou dost not longer doubt—Thy ears are traitors if they did not feelThe music as it came by us but now. Isa. I heard a murmur truly, but so slight,A breath of the wind might make it, or a sailDrawn suddenly.
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