ECHO.
Reading edition
———
BY JOHN S. MOORE.
———
Sweet Echo, dweller in cavernous mountains,
Amid dark forests by abounding fountains,
Much loved that self-adoring boy,
The fair son of Cephisus,
And chased his footsteps with consuming joy,
Crying aloud “Narcissus!”
But vain were all her cries and all her wooing;
The youth replied not to the nymph pursuing,
But fled from her desiring gaze,
Filling her heart with anguish;
Then, like a flower scorched by the sun’s hot rays,
Echo began to languish.
Afar, in deepest solitudes reclining,
She hid her from the woodland maids, repining,
Wasting the day with idle plaint—
With unavailing sorrow,
And every day her beauty grew more faint,
More pale by every morrow.
At last, out-worn by grief and passion violent,
Sweet Echo died within her grottoes silent,
Leaving her story unto fame.—
Her voice will never perish;
The prattling rocks still rattle with her name,
The hills her memory cherish.