Nymph And Zephyr: A Statuary Group. By Westmacott

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



AND the summer sun shone in the sky,
And the rose's whole life was in its sigh,
When her eyelids were kiss'd by a morning beam,
And the Nymph rose up from her moonlit dream;
For she had watch'd the midnight hour
Till her head had bow'd like a sleeping flower;
But now she had waken'd, and light and dew
Gave her morning freshness and morning hue,--
Up she sprang, and away she fled
O'er the lithe grass stem and the blossom's head,
From the lillies' bells she dash'd not the spray,
For her feet were as light and as white as they.
Sudden upon her arm there shone
A gem with the hues of an Indian stone,
And she knew the insect bird whose wing
Is sacred to PSYCHE and to spring;
But scarce had her touch its captive prest
Ere another prisoner was on her breast,
And the Zephyr sought his prize again,--
'No,' said the Nymph, thy search is vain:
And her golden hair from its braided yoke
Burst like the banner of hope as she spoke,
'And instead, fair boy, thou shalt moralize
Over the pleasure that from thee flies;
Then it is pleasure,--for we possess
But in the search, not in the success.'

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:06 min read
112

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJKLLMMNN
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,073
Words 215
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 26

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

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