Wondering and bewildered by words she could not comprehend, but excited even to tears by the plaintiveness of their tone, Ione listened to these outpourings of a full and oppressed heart.  In truth, Apaecides himself was softened much beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming was usually either sullen or impetuous.  For the noblest desires are of a jealous nature—­they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface.  Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish.  For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one human heart shall find sympathy in another, so none ever interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our nearest and our dearest ties, forbear with us in mercy!  When we are dead and repentance comes too late, both friend and foe may wonder to think how little there was in us to forgive!

‘I will talk to thee then of our early years,’ said Ione.  ’Shall yon blind girl sing to thee of the days of childhood?  Her voice is sweet and musical, and she hath a song on that theme which contains none of those allusions it pains thee to hear.’

‘Dost thou remember the words, my sister?’ asked Apaecides.

‘Methinks yes; for the tune, which is simple, fixed them on my memory.’

’Sing to me then thyself.  My ear is not in unison with unfamiliar voices; and thine, Ione, full of household associations, has ever been to me more sweet than all the hireling melodies of Lycia or of Crete.  Sing to me!’

Ione beckoned to a slave that stood in the portico, and sending for her lute, sang, when it arrived, to a tender and simple air, the following verses:—­

Regrets for childhood

I

It is not that our earlier Heaven
Escapes its April showers,
Or that to childhood’s heart is given
No snake amidst the flowers. 
Ah! twined with grief
Each brightest leaf,
That’s wreath’d us by the Hours! 
Young though we be, the Past may sting,
The present feed its sorrow;
But hope shines bright on every thing
That waits us with the morrow. 
Like sun-lit glades,
The dimmest shades
Some rosy beam can borrow.

II

It is not that our later years
Of cares are woven wholly,
But smiles less swiftly chase the tears,
And wounds are healed more slowly. 
And Memory’s vow
To lost ones now,
Makes joys too bright, unholy. 
And ever fled the Iris bow
That smiled when clouds were o’er us. 
If storms should burst, uncheered we go,
A drearier waste before us—­
And with the toys
Of childish joys,
We’ve broke the staff that bore us!