To AEtna's scorching sands my Phaon flies! <br />False Youth! can other charms attractive prove? <br />Say, can Sicilian loves thy passions move, <br />Play round thy heart, and fix thy fickle eyes, <br />While in despair the Lesbian Sappho dies? <br />Has Spring for thee a crown of poppies wove, <br />Or dost thou languish in th' Idalian grove, <br />Whose altar kindles, fann'd by Lover's sighs? <br />Ah! think, that while on AEtna's shores you stray, <br />A fire, more fierce than AEtna's, fills my breast; <br />Nor deck Sicilian nymphs with garlands gay, <br />While Sappho's brows with cypress wreaths are drest; <br />Let one kind word my weary woes repay, <br />Or, in eternal slumbers bid them rest.<br /><br />Mary Darby Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-xxiii-to-aetna-s-scorching-sands/
